


Last Daughter

by itssupergay



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-02-14 09:30:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 50,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13004859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itssupergay/pseuds/itssupergay
Summary: Not all aliens raised by human parents grow up happy and well adjusted. Growing up with superpowers is a bitch to deal with when all Beca Mitchell wants is to survive high school and make music. She certainly doesn’t have time to deal with all of these people trying to befriend her, damn it.





	1. Chapter 1

_They hide the ship in the dusty old cellar at the back of the property. It’s the first time they’ve set foot inside since they moved in two years earlier. They secure the door with four heavy iron padlocks and don’t open it again for another eleven years._

 

* * *

 

_When Beca Mitchell turns twelve, her parents tell her the truth of how she came to live with them. It turns out she isn’t really twelve, not exactly, and her whole life is a lie. In hindsight, though, it really explains all the weird stuff she’s done over the years._

_They show her the spaceship, more of a pod really, and reiterate for what Beca feels is the millionth time that she can never tell anyone about the ship or her superhuman abilities. As if Beca wants to give the kids at school more fodder for criticism by telling them that she is, apparently, an alien._

_She decides then and there, in that dank cellar with the undeniable proof that she was right to always feel out of place, that the best course of action is to shut herself off from this world that isn’t even her own. She lets her grades drop, shirks her responsibilities at home, defies her parents at every opportunity._

_Maybe that’s the final straw in Ellen and Warren Mitchell’s already shaky marriage, or perhaps they had only been waiting until she knew the truth before they let everything fall apart. Either way, six months after Beca’s ‘birthday,’ her father leaves in the middle of the night with two suitcases and zero goodbyes. She receives a letter in the mail a few weeks later from an address in the city, full of shitty explanations and empty promises._

_Despite her mother’s protests, Beca takes the letter and breaks into the cellar. She ignites the paper with her recently discovered heat vision, lets the flames rage for a long moment before stomping them out with a frustrated growl._

_Still not satisfied, she sets her rage on the ship, discovers that alien metal is the only thing her fist can’t crush on impact. It’s the first time she remembers feeling pain._

_The sensation draws her back to the cellar several more times in the months that follow._  

 

* * *

 

 _When the cellar caves in during a storm the next year and buries the ship beneath a dozen feet of mud and rocks, it’s probably for the best._

 

* * *

 

_Beca reconciles with her mom when she’s fourteen. She still gets nothing but birthday and Christmas cards from her father, but at least she’s back on speaking terms with one parent._

_After her mother gets sick, Beca wonders, more than once, if she should have remained distant. Perhaps then all of this would have been easier._

_But somehow she doubts that’s true._

 

* * *

 

Two days after her mother’s funeral, Beca drags the three suitcases containing all she has left in the world up the front steps of her dad’s new house that he shares with his new wife in a city she already hates. She never loved small town life, either, but at least it was familiar.

 

Beca ignores her father’s offer of help as he follows her inside, averts her eyes from the forced look of pity on Sheila the Stepmonster’s face, and continues on up the stairs to the empty room she assumes is now hers.

 

Two of the bags get tossed to the floor at the foot of the unmade bed, which, along with a worn oak dresser, is the only furniture in the room. The last suitcase she places gently on the bare mattress, careful of the delicate mixing equipment and laptop tucked inside.

 

For years, even before she knew the truth about her origins, music had been Beca’s escape. Her inhumanly keen ear and ability to learn things quickly given the inclination had made it easy to pick up a few instruments here and there.

 

The interest in mixing had come at thirteen, after watching a handful of videos online. The day after she’d mentioned this interest in passing, her mother had gone out and bought her the best equipment a small town music store could stock. Beca had wondered if it was maybe some sort of consolation prize, given that her first birthday since the divorce had come and gone with little more than an unsigned drugstore greeting card from her father. Regardless, Beca’s mom never explained and Beca had never asked. She’d been civil with her mother, almost friendly even, for two weeks after that, before everything had returned to the typical cold silence she’d been maintaining for a year by that point.

 

Shaking her head clear of unwanted memories, Beca sets about unpacking everything, employing only a touch of super speed, and then rests her hands on her hips and surveys the room.

 

It isn’t bad. Bigger than her room back home, not that she has anything to fill the extra space. She’d need a desk and chair, of course. Maybe a bedside table. And it would take a hefty number of band posters to mask the bleak sterility of the white painted walls.

 

A knock at the closed bedroom door interrupts Beca’s musings and she frowns. She doesn’t need superhuman senses to know it’s her dad. Still, she peers through the door just to gauge the look on his face, wondering if she should be prepared for another round of attempted fatherly concern over her grieving process.

 

“Bec? Can I come in, please?”

 

Beca ensures he hears her reluctant sigh as she opens the door, but he doesn’t seem phased. Even her harshest glare – without using heat vision – only makes him waver a little as they perch as far from one another as possible on the bed. Beca would like to think it’s because he fears her slightly, but it’s likely only because her equipment doesn’t leave much room for sitting.

 

“Beca…” he begins, and then hesitates.

 

Beca cuts him off before he can continue. “Save it. I’m only here because I have to be. I don’t need a father any more than you want to be one again. So just leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone. Everybody’s happy.”

 

Her dad sighs. “Beca, honey, please. I know you’re hurting, but I–”

 

“ _No_ , you don’t know,” Beca growls, and if the edge of the wooden bed frame where she’s curled her fingers splinters a little under her grip, neither of them notice. “You don’t know, because you weren’t there. You haven’t been for years, so you can’t just waltz back into my life and pretend like everything’s fine, or like you know me at all anymore. You don’t.”

 

“Beca. I know it’s been a long time. But I am trying.” Beca scoffs and turns her glare out the window as he continues. “I know I haven’t been the best father, but I’m trying to be better now, for your sake. Sheila and I–”

 

“ _Sheila_ ,” sneers Beca. “What have you told her about me? Your freak alien daughter that you couldn’t bear to deal with any longer. Does she know that’s why you left us?”

 

“ _No_ , Beca,” he interjects, running a hand over his weary face. “That’s not why I left. It wasn’t because of you. Your mom and I… We just weren’t working. We had to get away from each other. It was never because of you,” he repeats, and tries to place his hand atop hers where it rests on the bed. Beca pulls it away faster than his eyes can even process, and he hesitates again before adding, “And I would never tell Sheila anything without your permission, Beca. I promise. Your safety comes first.”

 

Beca finally turns her gaze back to his, eyes hard. “Yeah, well, you’re never going to have my permission. So let’s keep it that way.”

 

She stands up, her rigid posture a clear indication that the conversation is over, and shoves her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “I’m going for a walk,” she declares. “And I’ll get my own dinner.”

 

Her dad only nods, resignation lining his features.

 

He watches from the bed as Beca slips on a pair of shoes and dons a jacket she doesn’t need, slings a pair of headphones around her neck. Just as she’s slipping silently out the door, he calls out. “Please don’t be out too late. Remember you start at your new school tomorrow.”

 

Beca rolls her eyes. Her father, the professor. “Of course,” she replies, heavy with sarcasm. “Can’t miss that.” And with that, she thunders down the stairs and out the door, swinging it shut with a resounding thud behind her.

 

* * *

 

It’s only the thought of disappointing her dead mother that has Beca pushing through the front doors of her new school the next morning. She hasn’t spoken to her father since their argument the evening before, and doesn’t plan to for as long as she can manage.

 

He had offered to drive her to school over a tense breakfast, but she’d only hastened to finish her meal and then left without a word. She may not know the city well but she would rather get lost than spend even fifteen minutes trapped in a car with the man who abandoned her four years ago and now pretends otherwise. She didn’t need him then and she doesn’t need him now.

 

Barden High School is just like any other, Beca decides as she weaves through hordes of drowsy teenagers on her way to the front office. Much like her previous high school, it reeks of sweat and hormones and excessive amounts of body spray. The kids are loud and pimple-faced – perhaps the only grace of Beca’s alien DNA is that she hadn’t been cursed with the latter – and they mostly ignore her as she attempts to battle her way through without breaking any bones. Even if one particularly handsy freshman boy she passed might have deserved it.

 

The staff members in the main office are as disinterested as the students, and she’s leaving minutes after she entered, all undesired small talk avoided and with a freshly printed class schedule in hand.

 

* * *

 

 Beca is almost starting to think she’ll enjoy the anonymity offered by a large school in a large city when the moment she’d been dreading comes as she’s on her way to lunch.

 

“Hey! You’re new here, right? I’ve never seen you around before.”

 

Beca briefly wonders if she can roll her eyes hard enough to generate a gust of wind that would knock the boy over, but dismisses the thought just as quickly. “Well, then I must be,” she retorts dryly. Maybe he’ll leave her alone if she’s enough of a dismissive asshole.

 

“Cool. Where are you from?”

 

“Not here.”

 

The boy stretches out a hand in front of her as they walk and Beca increases her pace to avoid its reach. “I’m Jesse, by the way.”

 

Beca grunts in response, wishing she still had the headphones that had been confiscated by her first period teacher. She hadn’t even been listening to anything, she thinks bitterly, missing their familiar weight around her neck.

 

Undeterred by her refusal to shake his hand, Jesse follows along beside her. Does this guy not pick up on her strong ‘leave me alone’ vibes?

 

“I noticed you in my psych class earlier, but I wasn’t able to catch you, you left the room so fast. Ever think of joining the track team?”

 

Beca tries throwing him a glare, but his step barely falters. Maybe he’s an alien, too, and his power is superior ignorance.

 

She changes tactics, hoping that engaging Jesse in conversation for a few minutes will be enough to satisfy him into leaving her alone.

 

“I don’t play sports,” she tells him. They join the end of the lunch line together and Beca sees Jesse’s grin widen in apparent delight at garnering an actual response from her.

 

“Me, neither.” He’s still grinning. Beca wonders if she might have a creepy stalker on her hands. “Hey, you should join marching band, then!”

 

Yeah, engaging him had been a mistake.

 

“No, thanks.” She piles her tray with as much food as is socially acceptable and goes back to ignoring Jesse’s prattling voice behind her.

 

“Okay.” Jesse inexplicably seems to take her every shutdown in stride. “Well, what are you into, then? Barden has a ton of clubs. I’m in one, actually. An a cappella group. We’re called the Treblemakers–”

 

“That’s nice.”

 

Beca pays for her food at the end of the line and leaves to find a seat at an empty table before Jesse can finish buying his own lunch. In an ideal world, that would mark the end of their conversation. Jesse would go find his friends – or whoever it is that tolerates him on a daily basis – and Beca would be left in peace.

 

But Beca has been acquainted with the harsh reality of this non-idyllic world since the day her tiny toddler fists crushed her wooden crib to splinters mid-tantrum, so she’s not surprised when Jesse slides into the seat across from her less than a minute later and smiles like she’s supposed to be glad he’s here.

 

“Hey. So you never told me your name.”

 

“Nope.”

 

Beca feigns intense interest in her slices of crappy cardboard pizza and slimy fruit cocktail. She’ll eat it, because her stupid alien biology somehow requires her to eat 10,000 calories a day, but she’s greatly looking forward to eating the box of donuts stuffed in her backpack later. Her inability to gain weight no matter how much she eats is another alien attribute she’s kind of grateful for, even if her mom always does …did… call her a ‘scrawny little thing.’

 

Desperate to get her mind off her mother, Beca glances up at Jesse and studies his hopeful expression. “It’s Beca,” she replies finally, reluctantly. “And I’m from a town you’ve never heard of.”

 

“Ah, small town girl, huh?”

 

Beca doesn’t dignify this with a response.

 

“So, what brought you here?”

 

“Life,” she replies, pushing a beige piece of something from the fruit cocktail around the tray with her fork.

 

Thankfully, Jesse takes that as the aversion tactic it is and changes the topic. “Are you a freshman?”

 

Beca ignores the potential dig at her size. “Junior.”

 

“Me, too!”

 

After a couple more unsuccessful attempts to find out more about her interests, Jesse returns the conversation to his ridiculous singing club, which, according to him, is one of the coolest groups on campus. Beca doubts this is the case, but she doesn’t make the effort to say as much.

 

“You should come see us perform sometime,” he tells her. “We have practice every day and our first competition is next month.”

 

Beca gives a noncommittal hum and bravely sticks the beige chunk in her mouth, deciding as she chews that the cloying syrup the fruit was floating in had masked any identifying flavor.

 

“Or, hey, do you like movies? The film club is–”

 

“Pass.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“I’m not a fan of movies,” Beca elaborates.

 

Jesse blinks wide eyes, mouth half-open in shock as though Beca had just slapped him. “At _all?_ ”

 

Beca shakes her head and pushes aside her empty tray. “They’re boring.”

 

Jesse gasps, hand pressed to his chest like some swooning dame. “Wow. I don’t think we can be friends anymore.”

 

Beca shrugs. She’s trying hard not to show her amusement at Jesse’s dramatics.

 

She has to admit (only to herself) that he’s not the worst kind of person that could have struck up conversation with her, even if he is a nerdy movie lover. If she were inclined to make friends, he might even be a good one.

 

As it is, Beca is still determined to avoid forming connections with anyone. The fewer people who know her, the fewer people with reason to leave her. She isn’t meant to be on this planet, so why bother trying to fit in? Beca is perfectly content to have the bitter voice in her head as her only friend. That and music, anyway.

 

When Beca fails to contribute more to the conversation, Jesse releases an exaggerated sigh. “Okay, fine,” he says. “We can still be friends, but I’m making it my life’s mission to get you to enjoy _one_ movie.”

 

Beca arches an eyebrow. “Who said I _want_ to be friends with you?”

 

Whatever Jesse’s response, it’s interrupted by a gangly boy approaching with startling enthusiasm, moving quickly enough that the black and red magician’s cape tied around his neck flutters behind him.

 

Honestly, this kid can wear _that_ , but Beca isn’t allowed to have her headphones? Talk about an unjust world.

 

“Hi, Jesse!” the boy greets. Beca avoids his questioning gaze. She doesn’t need another person trying to befriend her.

 

“Hey, Benji. How’s it going?”

 

Benji shrugs. “Not bad, I guess. We missed you at our usual table today,” he adds.

 

“Oh, yeah, sorry. I was talking to Beca.” Jesse gestures to her before Beca can figure out a way to halt the introductions. “She’s new here. Beca, this is my friend Benji. We’ve been working on his audition to join the Treblemakers.”

 

“Hey,” Beca offers, tossing in a half-hearted wave.

 

“Hi, Beca. Nice to meet you.” Benji seems sweet enough, but she’s no more inclined to become his friend than Jesse’s.

 

Or maybe older sister figure is more apt, considering the way his attire just screams ‘bully me.’

 

The boys start in on comparing potential songs – mostly a lot of Top 40s drivel, if you ask Beca. She’s not against working some pop hits into her mixes when they fit, but anything played on the radio fifteen times a day should be utilized sparingly.

 

When the five-minute bell for the next class rings, Beca slips silently away from the table. Jesse and Benji are deep enough in conversation that she escapes without notice, dropping her lunch tray in the nearest cart on her way to the door.

 

In her haste to exit the cafeteria, she collides bodily with another person and gets a mouthful of long curly hair. Her quick reflexes prevent them becoming a toppled mess on the floor – although why those reflexes couldn’t kick in _before_ she nearly killed a fellow student on her first day, she’d never know.

 

Still, Beca wants to somehow take it all back, to reverse time, because when she finally spits the hair out and gets a look at the person she’d crashed into, she’s certain she’s committed the greatest faux pas a high school student can commit. Injuring the prettiest girl in school – honestly, Beca can’t even imagine someone prettier – is surely a heinous offense, and if Beca weren’t impervious to physical damage she’d probably be run through with a pitchfork just for breathing the same air as this girl.

 

Eyes so blue Beca has a hard time believing they’re real turn to meet her own and Beca steels herself for the oncoming verbal lashing. Instead, the eyes almost seem to shine with tears as the girl exclaims, “Oh, my gosh! I’m so sorry! Are you okay?”

 

As though _she_ is the one at fault here, even though _Beca_ is the one who could have easily just broken every bone in the poor girl’s body, not that the redhead is aware of this particular detail.

 

“Um, I– Uhh…” Beca answers with all the eloquence of an infant who hasn’t yet grasped the concept of speech. She forces her gaze to focus on the ceiling tiles above them and not the knee-shaking beauty of a girl so far out of her league she may as well be back on her own planet – wherever the hell that is. “I’m fine,” she manages finally. “Uh, sorry about that.”

 

The redhead beams as though she’s just won the lottery or something. “Oh, good! I’m sorry, too. I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

 

What is with the people in this school and their overwhelming enthusiasm? Beca wonders. Whatever happened to good old hormone-fueled rage and cool-kid apathy?

 

For the first time, Beca notices the piercing glare of the tall blonde standing just to her right, and thanks Mother Nature for the fact that humans don’t possess heat vision. Apparently she needn’t look far to find that rage. The redhead may appear unperturbed by the incident, but her blonde counterpart looks as though she’d like to serve roast Beca for lunch instead of the cafeteria’s soggy pizza du jour.

 

“Chloe!” the blonde exclaims reprovingly. “Don’t apologize to her. _She’s_ the one who nearly gave you a concussion.”

 

Hoping to stem the blonde’s ire, and for her own peace of mind, Beca hastens to return the question. “Are _you_ okay?”

 

Chloe waves a dismissive hand. Whether at her friend or Beca herself, she isn’t sure, but it effectively silences them both. “No harm done, really. We’re all good here.”

 

“O- okay. Good.” Beca is inclined to take this as official pardon for her crimes and hurry off to class before the late bell rings, but she doesn’t take more than a step before a hand in the crook of her elbow halts her progress. She can tell by the pressure that it’s actually an attempt to draw her backwards, and takes a few steps back to give the appearance that a 5’2” teenage girl isn’t as immovable as a brick wall.

 

Thankfully, it isn’t the blonde stopping her in order to dole out retribution, but the redhead, Chloe, looking as though she has something more to say.

 

“Where are you going?”

 

Beca frowns, gesturing to the electronic bell above the doorway that is surely about to ring. “Uh, class?”

 

Chloe waves her hands again, so close Beca has to cross her eyes to see them in front of her face. “Never mind that,” she says, like skipping class is no big deal. Beca is no goody two shoes, but the blonde friend seems like the type to burst a blood vessel at the mere thought of breaking a rule, so she’s kind of surprised by the dismissal. “I never got your name.”

 

Make that really surprised. This teenage paragon of beauty and radiant smiles wants to know _her_ name? Beca can’t imagine a less likely scenario than her making friends with someone like Chloe. Still, she offers her name hesitantly. “Um, it’s Beca.”

 

“Beca,” Chloe repeats. “I like it. I’m Chloe.”

 

By some miracle, Beca manages to stop herself from saying something stupid like “I know.” Instead she presses her lips together in a tight almost-smile and gives Chloe a nod.

 

“And this is my best friend, Aubrey,” Chloe adds, gesturing to the blonde.

 

“Chloe,” Aubrey interjects, exasperation so evident it practically seeps from her pores, “Come on. We should get to class.”

 

Beca rushes off at mostly human speed as soon as Chloe turns her head and doesn’t breathe again until she’s seated in her fourth period class. And if her exhale of relief freezes the surface of her desk a little, well, at least no one around her notices.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm my own beta so sorry for any mistakes. Also, I don't have this thing 100% planned out, so if there's anything you'd like to see, let me know and I'll take it into consideration!


	2. Chapter 2

Beca twists a dial on her mixing board and draws her hand back to cup the left earpiece of her headphones. Satisfied with the change, she hits the ‘Save’ button on the track and minimizes the window, returning to the document with all ten words of her 2,000 word English paper, due tomorrow.

 

She can hear her father and Sheila talking downstairs, even with her music at full volume. They’re discussing her, or more specifically, her ‘lack of respect,’ according to Sheila, and Beca can tell her father is struggling to remain neutral on the matter. He must know she can hear them. Beca can’t imagine that he would be even halfway defensive of her attitude otherwise, considering it had been part of the reason he’d left her in the first place, no matter what he claims.

 

Beca tells herself that if it weren’t for the distraction, she could easily type up the remaining 1,990 words of her essay in less than twenty minutes. But it isn’t the conflict downstairs that has her losing focus.

 

No, the turmoil of her thoughts is entirely due to a couple of persistent individuals who can’t seem to comprehend that Beca doesn’t  _want_  to make friends, much less join any of their obnoxious clubs.

 

She’s been at Barden for a month, now, and it seems that every day she steps through the front doors, Jesse or Chloe – or both, though not together yet, thank god – has concocted a new way to drive Beca insane. Perhaps it was because they had all grown up together and thus knew her too well to want to try, but Beca had never known anyone at her old school as pushy and aggressively enthusiastic as Jesse Swanson and Chloe Beale.

 

Despite her initial assumption that Chloe and Aubrey must be queens of the school, it turns out they’re no more popular with the student body than Jesse and his band of singing nerds. In fact, she had discovered three days in that they’re the leaders of the Treblemakers’ rival team, the Barden Bellas. Beca scoffs just thinking about it.

 

Figures that she would attract the weirdos. What else could you expect for an actual alien? She’s probably the weirdest of them all, though she’d like to believe she’d be a perfectly normal human being otherwise.

 

But for the first time she can remember, Beca somehow has multiple people seeking her friendship, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to remind herself why having people to talk to is a bad thing. Other than, you know, the whole alien-that-people-might-definitely-want-to-experiment-on-if-they-knew thing. Still, she doesn’t have to  _tell_  them that.

 

Beca sighs. Maybe she’s just better off without friends. It’s a lot less complicated.

 

She adds a few more words to her essay that she’ll definitely end up deleting again later and then shuts the lid of her laptop. A small push with her index finger against the edge of her new desk sends her chair rolling backwards until she reaches the wall on the opposite side of the room. From there, she reaches under her bed and pulls out a box of chocolate chip granola bars.

 

Sheila has complained three times already about Beca’s eating habits. Beca’s dad blames it on her being ‘a growing teenager’ but Beca can’t see the Stepmonster buying that excuse for long when she’s going through a box of cereal a day or emptying out a freezer packed to bursting with DiGiorno pizzas. On unspoken agreement with her father, Beca has taken to hiding bags of nonperishables under her bed whenever he brings stuff home from the grocery store. The less Sheila sees of her eating habits, the better, she figures.

 

Once she’s gone through the whole box of granola bars, Beca stands from the chair and stares back towards her abandoned laptop. The combination of an unfinished essay and three in-progress mixes should be all the encouragement she needs to sit back down and get to work. But something about the emptiness she’s been feeling all too often lately, even at the thought of making music, has her walking out her bedroom door and down the stairs instead.

 

As she slips on her shoes and coat, Beca ignores her dad and Sheila’s questioning stares, no doubt wondering why she’s voluntarily going outside for the first time since she moved in, and at twenty minutes to dusk, no less. She doesn’t owe them an explanation, though. And even if they were to ask, she doesn’t know where she’s going any better than they do.

 

For a while, Beca just wanders aimlessly. Being out in the fresh air seems to help, even though she doesn’t actually know what it is she needs help with. After they’d started speaking to each other again a couple of weeks ago, her dad had cautiously suggested she talk to a therapist, or at least to him. She’d been quick to shut down both options. Just because she’s answering his questions about her dinner requests and which books she’s reading in English, it doesn’t mean she’s ready to really  _talk_  to him now. He gave up the privilege of a close relationship when he left her four years ago.

 

When she reaches a tree-lined park sporting some picnic benches and a small playground, Beca stops to lean against the gateway entrance. This late on a Sunday evening, there’s hardly anyone around, either in the park or the surrounding streets. The city’s fairly large, but it doesn’t have much in the way of a bustling nightlife. The only other person she sees is a man in a tracksuit walking his dog at the other end of the park.

 

With the light breeze in her hair and her eyes closed, Beca can almost imagine she’s flying. It’s something she hasn’t done much since she was eleven and nearly gave her mother a heart attack by jumping off the roof. The fear in her mom’s eyes after she’d floated back to the ground, like she might suddenly decide to take off and never return, had scared young Beca into using that power only where her parents couldn’t see, and then eventually not at all. When her mom got sick, Beca hadn’t wanted her to ever think that she’d leave, so she’d made certain she never did anything that might give that impression, including fly.

 

But her mom is gone now, there’s no one important left to hold back for, and maybe if she flies high enough, she’ll be able to forget all of the heavy things that seem to keep her tied to the earth.

 

Despite the lack of people around, she heads into the trees for some extra cover, and then, with a slight bend of her knees, Beca shoots upward into the cool night air. When she makes it past the cloud layer, she closes her eyes and attempts to push away all of the thoughts and memories fogging up her mind, as though it will help her to float better on the wind.

 

After her parents had finally disclosed her origins, Beca had indulged in a lot of retrospection. Her inhuman powers had begun to make a lot more sense, of course, but so had all the time she’d spent alone as a kid. Other parents set up play dates for their children and encourage participation in extracurricular activities. Beca’s parents had practically lauded her reclusive behavior, which had become so comfortable for her over time that she’d eventually stopped noticing that all the other kids had friends and did things outside of school.

 

It became clear to Beca that her parents must have kept her away from other people because they didn’t know how to explain her. The day four-year-old Beca had lifted the sofa over her head with one hand so she could reach the bouncy ball that rolled underneath was the day she began her training in seclusion and responsibility. Every time Beca did something ‘special,’ her parents had found a way to turn it into a lesson on why she shouldn’t. Eventually, though, they must have figured it had been thoroughly drilled into her brain, because they stopped talking about her ‘differences’ altogether, until that day in the cellar.

 

Beca had tried to bring it up a few times, but she’d soon gotten the picture. They didn’t want to talk about it. They certainly hadn’t wanted  _her_  to talk about it. Maybe it was only out of fear for her safety, but a confused kid needs her parents’ guidance, not their feigned ignorance. It was that initial blockade in communication that had made it easier to shut them out completely later on.

 

Now, she doesn’t want to think at all. For as long as she can before she has to return to her room and finish her essay, before she has to go back to school on Monday and remind herself why it’s better to not have friends, before she has to face reality again, Beca just wants to _be_. 

 

* * *

 

“I know your secret.”

 

Beca wonders if she’s capable of choking to death. Wouldn’t that be something? Her skin can’t be marred by so much as a paper cut but a dry chunk of charred beef from what the school somehow gets away with calling their ‘spaghetti and meatball special’ is her ultimate downfall.

 

“Dude, are you okay?”

 

But apparently even her esophagus has super strength, because she’s swallowing it down a second later.

 

“I’m fine,” she answers Jesse sharply. “What do you mean you know my secret?”

 

Jesse invites himself to sit in the chair across from her, which he hasn’t done in a few weeks, despite his continued efforts to befriend her. She thinks it probably has something to do with the heated (not literally) glare she’d leveled at him after the fourth consecutive day of his intrusion upon her efforts to subtly eat as much food as possible at lunch. Because it turns out that trying to eat a box of donuts in the back of her fifth period English class is frowned upon, and also weird enough to attract the attention of her fellow students, which, whatever. They  _wish_  they could eat whole boxes of sugary fried dough and not get sick. Probably.

 

Oh, right. Jesse. And her secret. Had he seen her flying in the park last night? It was dark, but there is such a thing as night vision binoculars and stuff, right?

 

Beca shakes her head. She’s being ridiculous. “ _What_  secret?” she presses. 

 

Jesse grins and points to the headphones she had forgotten she’s wearing. “That you’re never actually listening to anything with those things.”

 

Crap. Beca frowns. “Yes, I am,” she argues, reluctantly sliding the silent headphones down to rest around her neck. “Usually.”

 

“Uh huh.” Jesse’s indulgent smile tells her he doesn’t believe her and okay, yeah, about half the time she  _isn’t_  listening to anything, but to be fair, her stupid super ears can hear everything even when she is listening to music, so it’s really more of a symbolic thing anyway. Not that people like Jesse respect the implications of it.

 

Beca sighs, resigning herself to this conversation. “What do you want?”

 

“I want you to watch a movie with me. This weekend.”

 

“Why?” Beca asks, nose wrinkling in disgust.

 

Jesse rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “Because. It’ll be the start of your moviecation.”

 

“My  _what_?”

 

“Your movie education,” he clarifies, or tries to, anyway. “I told you, I’ve made it my life’s goal to get you to like one movie.”

 

“And I told  _you_ that isn’t going to happen.”

 

“Come on, it’ll be fun. I promise.”

 

Beca scoffs, raising a skeptical eyebrow. “You and I have very different definitions of fun.”

 

Whatever Jesse says next goes ignored by Beca, as she lets her gaze drift away at the sound of the cafeteria doors opening and sees Chloe Beale and a few of the other Bellas entering the room. She follows their progress through the maze of lunch tables, until they reach the one where Aubrey and the remaining Bellas sit with several plates of untouched spaghetti and meatball special.

 

Beca doesn’t know if she’s relieved or disappointed that Chloe hadn’t noticed her sitting here. Honestly, she had found the redhead’s inexplicable desire for Beca to join the Bellas (they must really be desperate) creepy at first, still kind of does, but there’s something strangely endearing about it, too. In the worst possible way. She doesn’t  _want_  to like these people, damn it. Nothing good can come of it.

 

They’ll only leave her in the end.

 

Still, there’s no harm in staring surreptitiously like a weird stalker, is there?

 

“Oh,” Jesse says with a knowing tone, breaking through her embarrassing fixation on red curls and unreal blue eyes. “I see.”

 

Beca turns back to him just in time to see his eyebrows waggle at her suggestively. She throws a crusty meatball at him with deadly precision, hitting him smack in the middle of his forehead. His jaw drops open in mock offense as the meatball rebounds onto the table and rolls off the edge past Beca’s elbow.

 

“Okay, rude,” he says, swiping sauce away with the back of his hand.

 

Beca fails to suppress a smirk, even though she’s terrified of what he’s going to say about his revelation a moment ago.

 

“Anyway, you totally have a thing for Chloe Beale.”

 

There it is.

 

“No, I don’t,” she tries, forcing herself to relax her grip on the table before she snaps a chunk of it off in a room full of people.

 

“Uh, yeah, you do. My astronaut dad could see it from outer space.”

 

“Your dad is not an astronaut.”

 

Jesse shrugs. “Okay, no, he isn’t. But it’s still true, Bec.”

 

“Don’t call me that.” Beca frowns, which is starting to feel like a permanent configuration for her face as of late. This is feeling a lot like friendly banter, which she is 100% opposed to.

 

“Fine,” Jesse says, hands raised in defeat. “You know I’m right, though.”

 

If Beca broke his shin with her toe, just a little bit, no one would really believe it, right?

 

“You’re definitely wrong,” she says instead, because that mom voice in the back of her head reminds her that violence is not the answer. This time. “And I’m leaving now.” She gathers her things and stands up.

 

“Aw, Beca, wait!” Jesse pleads, and she does, for some reason. “I’ll stop, I swear. Just...” He gestures back to her seat, so Beca sits, slowly. “Will you still watch a movie with me this weekend?”

 

“I never agreed to that.”

 

“Please?”

 

“Dude, why are you so determined to make this happen?” she asks.

 

The thought occurs to her briefly that Jesse actually  _does_  know about her otherworldly origins and is luring her into an elaborate trap, but that could just be the paranoia instilled in her since infancy talking.

 

“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “Because you seem interesting, from what little I know of you. And I think it’d be cool if we were friends.”

 

“Seriously?”

 

Okay, no, he’s definitely lying. ‘Interesting’ and ‘I’d make a good friend’ are definitely not vibes Beca has ever given off, willingly or otherwise.

 

“All right, and I was maybe sort of, like, interested in you for a while there.”

 

It makes a lot more sense now, or at least more sense than the secret-government-agent-in-disguise thing. ‘Potential girlfriend’ is another vibe Beca has never given off. But she supposes she can’t really blame Jesse for taking an interest, considering she’d just been creepy staring at Chloe not that long ago.

 

“But I can see you’re into Chloe - and no amount of protest will convince me otherwise so don’t bother,” he continues, “so I totally get it if you want me to back off. But I really am trying to be your friend, too. Just... so you know.”

 

This is her opening, her chance to potentially rid herself of Jesse for good. One less person that might pester her into opening up about things she can’t ever be truly honest about.

 

Except, a memory she thought she had repressed suddenly itches at the back of her mind. Her mom, lying in the hospital bed that she was confined to most of the time near the... near the end. She had reached out with pale, shaky fingers and grasped Beca’s deceptively strong ones with all the force she could muster, which hadn’t been much. Beca had just said something about refusing to see her father as a father again, even if she would be forced to live with him soon, and her mom had gotten that look in her eyes that Beca hadn’t seen since her leap of faith off the roof five years ago, like she was scared for Beca. “Let  _someone_  in, Bec,” she’d said, voice quiet and raspy but full of fervor. “I don’t want you to be alone in this world.”

 

The memory of her words hits Beca like a sucker punch to the gut now, not just for the unwelcome reminder of her loss that it holds, but because it brings into stark relief the truth she has been trying to avoid. Her parents may have wanted to protect her by keeping her close, but she doubts they ever intended for her to feel so alone.

 

So she doesn’t tell Jesse to go away, like the part of her still clinging to self-preservation wants to do. Instead, all that comes out of her mouth is “You’re a weirdo.”

 

And Jesse must pick up on the teasing tone, because he grins as though she’s just told him she actually loves movies and Stephen Spielberg is her idol.

 

“Awesome. We’re gonna be great friends, I can tell.” Beca’s responding hum is less than convinced. “So for the start of your moviecation I was thinking we’d go with The Breakfast Club and then-”

 

Beca shakes her head. “I only meant we could be friends. I’m still not watching a movie with you, Jesse.”

 

Jesse deflates at that, but only slightly. “I’ll get through to you eventually,” he declares. “And we’ll work on that massive crush you have on Chloe Beale, too.”

 

“Still not a thing.”

 

“Yeah, okay,” he replies, as unconvinced as Beca had been a moment ago. “We’re two months into the school year now, you know. You’ll have to give in to your girlfriend and join the Bellas soon if you want to compete in the semi-finals. Hey, we’d be aca-bros.”

 

Beca rolls her eyes. “Not my girlfriend. And not gonna happen.”

 

She had fulfilled her mother’s dying wish, in a sense, had let someone in past the fortifications she’d been constructing all her life. Granted, Jesse had really only made it past the first layer of defenses, squished between two reinforced steel walls on the outskirts of Beca’s heart, but that’s more than can be said for even her own father. A casual friend is still a friend.

 

That’s not to say, though, that all of this means she’s ready to run off and join an a cappella group (no matter how stunningly gorgeous one of the co-captains). Nothing on this earth could drive her to do  _that_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I can't promise I'll ever update this quickly again, but I'll try my best to update weekly. Thanks to the people who gave kudos and commented on the last chapter! I appreciate the kindness and enthusiasm for this story. Also, I know there isn't a lot of Chloe in this chapter, but there will be in the next one, so no worries!


	3. Chapter 3

Beca’s friendship with Jesse is kind of a work in progress, but hanging out with him makes for a good excuse to her father why she isn’t home as often. Even if it’s only true roughly half the time she’s out, it’s still more acceptable to her father than “I don’t know, just flying around the city while I contemplate life and death.” It gets him off her back, anyway.

 

Unfortunately, befriending Jesse has also turned out to be an unforeseen package deal. Most of the last week she has eaten lunch not just with him but also with Benji and a rotating selection of other kids Jesse refers to as ‘aca-nerds.’ If nothing else, she has to admit that the term is apt.

 

And somehow, Jesse has roped poor Benji into his efforts to convince Beca to watch a movie with him. Although, the only movie Benji seems to promote is Star Wars, which, no. Beca has had enough alien drama in her life, thank you.

 

Jesse also refuses to let go of his conviction that Beca has a crush on Chloe (she  _doesn’t_ ) and that Chloe might someday return those feelings (no way in hell, Beca's not deluded). Just because Chloe has approached her a few times since their collision in the cafeteria and asked her to join the Bellas, it doesn’t mean she has any special interest in Beca as a person. They’re probably just desperate for members and Beca is fresh meat.

 

That’s what she tells Jesse, anyway. In truth, Chloe has approached her about ten times in the last couple of weeks alone, and Beca is starting to wonder if she’d been premature that first day in pegging  _Jesse_  as the stalker type. It’s not that Chloe is being super creepy in her efforts, though – mostly. Beca is just particularly allergic to enthusiasm, and yet it seems to follow her everywhere here. Jesse had been one thing, but Chloe takes sunshine smiles to a whole other level. Not that Beca notices Chloe’s smiles, or anything.

 

Beca is on her way to the only class she shares with Jesse when the subject of her thoughts rounds the corner ahead of her, flanked by two other Bellas she has come to know as Lilly and Fat Amy. And yeah, Beca may be an invulnerable alien with disproportionate strength and laser eyes, but these two girls frighten her more than she’d care to admit.

 

Fat Amy, who Beca possibly shares half her classes with (it’s hard to tell when Amy rarely attends them), seems to have a new story about wrestling dingoes or crocodiles or whatever other Australian fauna each time they interact. They’re truly unbelievable tales. Beca doesn’t know what brought Amy to Barden of all places, but she’s afraid to ask.

 

And then there’s Lilly. Beca only has World History with her but it’s more than enough. She’s always whispering the most disturbing things, which Beca is certain she’d never be able to hear if she were human – and every word out of Lilly’s mouth makes her wish she was.

 

The fact that she doesn’t share a single class with Chloe is probably the hardest thing to comprehend, though.

 

“Beca, hey!” Chloe waves, the three of them moving through the crowds towards Beca like a single entity. Beca wonders if their ‘synchronized lady dancing,’ as she had once heard Aubrey describe it, has seeped into their everyday lives.

 

She stops walking and waits for them to cross the last few feet of hallway, though Lilly’s intense stare makes her want to do the exact opposite. She focuses on Chloe instead and tries to pretend like she isn’t just as intimidated by the gleam in those clear blue eyes.

 

“Hey,” she greets when they reach her, trailing off awkwardly when she can’t think of anything more to say.

 

Chloe smiles at her. (Beca’s heart does  _not_  flutter at the sight. It always beats that fast, okay? She’s an alien.) She opens her mouth to say something, but Amy cuts in before she can.

 

“Oh, hey, what’s up, Beca?” she says, too casually.

 

Beca raises a suspicious eyebrow. “Uh, not much. Why?”

 

“No reason.” Amy’s reply is high pitched and not at all convincing. “Oh,” she wags a finger in the air like a thought has just come to her, when it’s clear to all that she’d known exactly what she’s about to ask. “Do you, by any chance, have the notes for our calculus class?”

 

Beca narrows her eyes. She hadn’t even been aware that Amy’s  _in_  her calculus class. “For which day?”

 

“Ehh,” Amy says, still high pitched and with an offhanded shrug. “All of them?”

 

“Amy!” Chloe chastises, saving Beca from responding. Which is fine by her. She’s not sure she would ever see her notes again if she loaned them to Amy. “Are you skipping classes again?”

 

“I’ve got better things to do with my time,” Amy answers dismissively.

 

“I built a time machine using animal remains,” Beca hears Lilly murmur. She suppresses a shudder.

 

“Um... So did you guys need something?” she asks. Her eyes flick to Amy. “Something else, I mean.”

 

“Oh, yeah!” Chloe says. “We came to invite you to Bellas rehearsals today, after school.”

 

“I-” Beca hesitates. She really doesn’t want to hurt Chloe’s feelings, but the thought of singing and dancing onstage when she’s spent a lifetime hiding away from the world still makes her cringe internally. Plus, a cappella just seems lame, if Jesse’s feelings about it are any indication.

 

“You don’t have to participate!” Chloe hastens to add. “I just thought you might like to watch.”

 

And on that weirdly phrased note, Beca takes a half step backward and shifts her backpack on her shoulders nervously. “Uh, I’ll think about it,” she lies. By some miracle, the phrase ‘saved by the bell’ becomes a reality and Beca releases a quiet sigh. “See you later?” she says, already starting to walk away. She doesn’t miss the faint lines of disappointment on Chloe’s face but they’re quickly overshadowed by a blinding smile.

 

“Okay. Bye, Beca!” Chloe calls after her.

 

Beca forces herself not to look back.

 

* * *

 

When the final bell rings later that day, Beca’s initial urge is to head straight to her bedroom and mixing equipment. She hadn’t made any plans with Jesse and she knows her dad and Sheila won’t be home until late tonight, so she’ll have the house to herself for a precious few hours to start off her weekend.

 

Except, as she’s passing the auditorium on her way to the nearest point of escape, she hears a chorus of harmonizing voices coming from inside.

 

She had taken her time leaving her last classroom, preferring empty hallways to pushing her way through hundreds of teenagers and their various assaulting noises and odors, so there’s no one else around to see her pause outside the steel double doors and squint at them to see through. Thankfully, because she surely looks like a maniac doing this.

 

What she sees on the other side is at the same time exactly what she’d expected and nothing she could have prepared for. She had expected to see the Bellas rehearsing, just as Chloe had said they would be, but she hadn’t anticipated being mesmerized by the sight of Chloe’s rotating hips or the sound of her melodic voice. Beca can’t convince herself to look away, either. Her eyes feel glued in place, permanently fixed in x-ray vision mode, her mind fogged by the inappropriate thoughts running through it.

 

God, what had she been thinking, spying on a Bellas rehearsal? This is in no way helping her deny the crush Jesse keeps teasing her about. And it’s also creepy as hell. Although, to be fair, she  _had_ been invited to watch.

 

She stays there, staring through the doors like a peeping Tom, until she hears footsteps approaching from around the corner.

 

Beca disappears from the hallway before whoever it is can find her standing there.

 

When she gets back to her dad’s house, probably sooner than she should have if she’d walked at normal human speed, she bypasses the kitchen and heads directly to her room. She pulls a package of muffins from under her bed, remembers the inappropriate thoughts she’d been having about Chloe not long ago, and quickly shoves it back under, grabbing a bag of pretzels instead.

 

She eats the pretzels mindlessly as she throws herself into finishing a mix she’d started a few days earlier. Anything to get her mind off of  _those_  thoughts.

 

Beca doesn’t even notice when her father and Sheila walk through the front door a few hours later, fixated as she is on her music. She’s only pulled from the intensity of her focus by a knock on the door.

 

“Come in,” she calls out, in a tone that suggests the knocker is not, in fact, welcome at all.

 

She slips her headphones down to hang around her neck as her dad opens the door. He frowns when he enters, reaching over to flip her light switch, and Beca blinks. She hadn’t noticed it had gotten dark.

 

“Hey, Bec,” he greets, and when a response is unforthcoming, adds, “Have you eaten dinner yet?”

 

Beca shakes her head. She hasn’t eaten dinner with him and Sheila since she moved in, and somehow he senses that this isn’t about to change tonight, because he says “All right, I’ll leave something in the fridge for you later.”

 

But he doesn’t immediately turn to leave, so Beca waits, brown raised in expectation.

 

She watches him look over the equipment on her desk with obvious distaste, any of the mild curiosity he’d possessed in her first week here long gone. She’d never known whether her mom had ever talked to him again after he left, but his initial surprise at her interest in music led her to believe he’d never asked about her if they did.

 

Eventually, he asks, “Did you finish your homework?”

 

Beca can’t resist the urge to sneer at the question. “Seriously? Why the urge to parent me now? I don’t recall my homework being of much interest to you before.”

 

He frowns. “Don’t speak to me that way, young lady,” he says, with more force in his tone than he’d used in the last month and a half. “I’ve tried to give you your space, but I’m getting really tired of the attitude, to be honest. I’m still your father and I’m responsible for your wellbeing.”

 

Beca barely stops herself from crushing the edge of her desk to a pulp beneath her clenching fingers. “But you’re not really my father, are you?” she challenges. “Not in practice and not by blood. We’re not even the same fucking species.”

 

“Beca-”

 

“So how can you stand there and pretend you have  _any_  investment my wellbeing? I told you before, you don’t know anything about me anymore, about what I’m going through. And I don’t want you to. That was  _your_  choice,” she spits. 

 

Anger simmers in her chest, red hot, like her heat vision had turned inward and boiled her from the inside out. And to be honest, she isn’t sure it’s entirely directed at her father, either. Flashes of similar arguments with her mother years ago cross her mind. Arguments about her true parentage and what a burden she must have been growing up, trying to come to terms with her ever-evolving powers. About her inability and unwillingness to fit in. Then she remembers the promise her mother had made soon after their reconciliation – that she would be by Beca’s side until Beca figured out who it is she was meant to be. Except now she’s gone and Beca feels more lost than ever.

 

She stares at her dad, chest heaving with poorly restrained emotion. The expression on his face is part anger to match her own, part something else she can’t put a name to in her clouded state of mind. He rocks forward, then back, then forward again, as though he can’t decide whether to move closer to Beca or get himself far away from her burning rage. Eventually he settles for something in between and stays rooted in place.

 

“I know it may be difficult for you to believe, but I really do care about you, Beca,” he says, sounding resigned, “even if I haven’t been the best at showing it. And I think you know what that’s like, struggling with your emotions and the walls you’ve put up to protect them. I think you picked that up from me, as much as you might hate for that to be the case.”

 

Beca remains silent. Her dad sighs.

 

“I just don’t want you to someday make the same mistakes as I did with your mother,” he continues. “I can’t force you to be open with me, I can see that’s not an option for us any time soon. But I do hope you don’t hide yourself behind those walls forever. It’s a really lonely place to be.” 

 

The familiar words slam into Beca the way she imagines a human would feel if run over by a truck, and she has to remind herself that even she needs to breathe on occasion.

 

Her dad takes a reverse step that brings him back out into the hallway, hand resting on her doorknob. “In the meantime, I’m still going to work on being your father again. Because that’s what I am, like it or not.  _Blood_  or not.”

 

And then he’s gone, pulling her bedroom door shut behind him.

 

When she can hear him back downstairs, sitting with Sheila on the couch in the living room, Beca slides down in her chair and tugs her fingers through her hair with a sigh.

 

She had wanted to tell him that she  _is_  open with people, with friends, that it’s only he who doesn’t deserve her vulnerability and trust. But she knows that couldn’t be further from the truth.

 

Beca thinks about her mom’s request, how even though she’s kind of got friends now in Jesse and Chloe and the others, she still hasn’t really let anyone in the way her mom had wanted. She’d been satisfied that day she agreed to be Jesse’s friend, but now the thought that she’s somehow lying to her mother tears at her with guilt and confusion.

 

Everyone seems to have come to this consensus that Beca should be ‘ _open_ ,’ but nobody seems to understand what a challenge that poses for  _Beca_. How is she supposed to be herself around people when even she isn’t really sure who –  _what_  – that is?

 

That lost, empty feeling Beca gets when she thinks of her mother returns, like someone’s taken a snow shovel and carved out her insides. She stares down at her fingers, clenching them experimentally. It’s hard to believe she still has all this strength, that she’s still physically invulnerable, when she feels like  _this_. It doesn’t really seem fair, to have so much power and still feel helpless.

 

And yet, some part of her knows she has to make an effort somewhere if she wants things to change.

 

Beca goes to sleep that night with more questions than answers and an ache in her heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this was a relatively shorter chapter with not much in the way of plot, but I needed it as a sort of interlude. I'm not totally happy with it, but oh well. I'll get the next chapter up sometime tomorrow to make up for it. On the bright side, I now have this fic 90% planned out and 60% written, so there's that. Thanks for reading and for the comments and kudos!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies in advance for the lack of Chloe in this chapter. The chapter was getting too long so I had to split it. But she will be in all future chapters, especially the next one, which I will post in a few days. Thanks for the continued support!

Beca had assumed after last night that her father would steer clear of confrontation with her for another month at least. And she’s mostly correct. It’s Sheila who brings up the argument the next morning when Beca reluctantly emerges to hunt down some breakfast. Her dad is somewhere else, maybe in the bathroom or maybe he’d gone out, Beca hadn’t thought to check, but as she’s digging through cabinets to find her cereal and oatmeal, the stepmonster clears her throat and fixes Beca with a glare she’s probably supposed to find intimidating.

 

“You should be more grateful, you know,” Sheila says.

 

Beca doesn’t acknowledge her, pouring milk into her cereal and sticking her oatmeal in the microwave. She moves to the fridge to pull out a container of fruit.

 

Sheila doesn’t back down at her silence, though. “Things could be a lot worse for you in your situation.”

 

She’s right, of course. Beca  _could_  be living on the street, or getting experimented on in a lab in some remote corner of the planet. But she’s here, and she’s still kind of angry, so instead of agreeing or shrugging the comment off she turns to Sheila and offers a glare of her own. “You don’t know shit about my situation.”

 

Sheila balks and then huffs angrily, slamming a palm on the countertop. The sound is loud enough to ring in Beca’s ears but she resists the urge to flinch. “Your father may be patient, but I’m tired of your moody attitude and your disrespect. Warren deserves better from you than these childish displays of defiance.”

 

“ _Moody?_ ” The metal fork Beca had been picking through the fruit with suddenly crumples in her tightened grip. She’s fortunate that her back is to Sheila and the woman doesn’t see, but as she’s dropping it in the breast pocket of her shirt to hide it, she sort of wishes she could just throw it at the stepmonster instead and _prove_ to her how little she knows about Beca.

 

Beca’s retort, which surely would have been clever and cutting and not at all awkward and ‘childish,’ is cut off as Beca’s father comes hurrying around the corner into the kitchen. He looks frazzled and he’s holding his cell phone like he’d been interrupted mid-call. Beca would almost feel bad about it if Sheila hadn’t been the one to start the whole thing. (And yes, she knows how childish  _that_  sounds, okay? Shut up.)

 

“What on earth is going on in here?”

 

Instead of answering, Beca snatches her phone and headphones off the counter and storms past the two of them on her way out of the house. She ignores their calls for her to come back, nearly shattering the front door when she slams it shut behind her, and definitely shattering a portion of the sidewalk out front, before she lightens her steps and makes her way towards the park.

 

Beca puts on a playlist to suit her mood as she walks. She stuffs her phone into her jeans pocket, glad she’d decided to put on clothes before she went downstairs earlier, but wishing she’d picked something that looked a little less than exactly what it is – a wrinkled set of days-old garments she pulled out from under her bed. (That place is starting to become a hazard, she’s sure, so it’s fortunate she can’t get sick.)

 

When she reaches the entrance of the park she slips in through the gate and cuts across the grass, past the playground, until she’s passing through the line of trees into the forest.

 

It’s more of a grove, really, but it’s become something of a haven for Beca. There aren’t any clear cut trails through the trees, so she’s found that people don’t often walk through and therefore it’s a good enough place to let loose with her powers if she’s careful.

 

She isn’t feeling particularly careful today, however. Her frustration from the night before is once again rearing its ugly head, compelling her to slam the side of her fist into the nearest tree.

 

It’s a skinny one, only about four inches in diameter, and it snaps clean in two at the force of her strike. She catches the top half of the tree as it comes down and stares at it for a moment before flinging it aside.

 

She feels a bit bad about taking her frustrations out on the innocent tree, but she’s still too fixated on Sheila’s words to dwell on it. How dare she call her moody, anyway? Her mom just died, she has a right to be  _moody_.  


Beca scuffs the toe of her sneaker in the dirt, frowning, and then checks her surroundings before taking off into the sky. At least if she’s up here she can’t damage anything else.

 

She flies within the cover of the clouds for an hour or so, listening to music and hoping the condensation doesn’t damage her headphones. But even her usual pastime doesn’t seem to help her calm down entirely, so she lands with caution back beneath the cover of the trees and dries her cloud-dampened clothes with heat vision. Hey, at least that means they’re clean now, right?

 

She stands there for a minute, hands on her hips, and listens to the sound of children laughing and playing in the park a few hundred feet away. Then, on a whim, she starts walking back through the woods and out of the park, making the half-mile journey to Jesse’s house. She has the sudden urge to vent to someone and his is the only house she knows how to find.

 

When she arrives, Beca peers through the walls before approaching the door, and is relieved to find Jesse home and alone. He’s watching a movie (no surprise there) so she has no qualms about knocking on the door and interrupting his morning.

 

“Beca?”

 

He seems surprised, which, yeah, considering she’s only been here once and she’d given him no warning, isn’t exactly an unwarranted response.

 

“What are you doing here?” he asks.

 

“Hi to you, too,” Beca snarks back.

 

“Sorry, I just didn’t expect you.”

 

Beca frowns. Of course she isn’t supposed to just show up out of the blue. She really needs to get better at this whole friend thing. “I can go,” she says, pointing back to the sidewalk behind her.

 

“No!” Jesse waves his hand that isn’t holding onto the door. “I mean, it’s not a bad surprise. You just didn’t strike me as the ‘drop by just because’ type, y’know?”

 

Beca shrugs, fingers twisting together awkwardly at her waist. “Right.”

 

“Do you want to come in, then?” Jesse asks, eyebrow raised. Beca hesitates. “Or we can just stand out here in the cold and not talk, that’s cool.”

 

Beca rolls her eyes, but tugs her flannel shirt tighter around her. She hadn’t noticed the cold – her natural body temperature runs closer to ‘furnace’ than ‘human’ – so she probably looks rather stupid walking around without so much as a jacket. 

 

When Jesse steps aside to let her in, Beca gives him an awkward smile of thanks and crosses the threshold into the entryway of the house. She shifts from foot to foot as he shuts and locks the door behind her, staring at a picture of a young Jesse and the boy she’d learned during her last visit is his older brother. It makes her wonder, briefly, whether she might have siblings on some other planet somewhere, or even on this planet, before Jesse’s voice at her shoulder interrupts her thoughts.

 

“Wanna sit down?”

 

She follows him into the living room, where a bowl of popcorn and a paused movie await his return.

 

“Sorry for just... showing up,” Beca says, sinking into the leather sofa as Jesse drops down on the next cushion over.

 

“It’s fine. I didn’t have any other plans.”

 

She stares at her hands, pressed flat against the tops of her thighs, and wonders what on earth possessed her to come here. Suddenly the whole ‘sharing your feelings with others’ thing sounds like a terrible idea and she’s chickening out and blurting the first words that come to mind before Jesse can ask her why she came.  


“What are you watching?”  


The instant grin that stretches his face makes her wish she could reach out and take the words back. But she can’t, and it’s too late to change topics and stop his spiel. She listens with feigned patience as he gives her the synopsis of the movie,  _Jaws_ , and rambles on about its score being one of the best of all time.

 

She even lets him press ‘Play’ when he asks, because anything is better than  _talking_  about  _herself_. Honestly, what had she been thinking?  


Beca stares at the screen with her best neutral expression and tries not to laugh inappropriately when a guy gets eaten by a giant shark onscreen. Jesse seems totally immersed in it, despite the fact that he’s probably seen it a million times. When she can no longer stand to focus on the movie, she lets her mind drift – first to thoughts of possible edits to improve her latest mix, and then she starts to wonder what it might be like to fight a shark, whether she could win such a face off. Except thoughts of fighting only bring her back to why she isn’t in her own house right now and she feels an all too familiar frown settle on her face again, though she tries to hide it.  


She must not be very successful, however, as they’ve only been watching for about ten minutes when Jesse pauses again and turns to look at her.

 

“Okay, what’s up with you?” he asks.

 

“What? Nothing.” Too fast, Beca.

 

Jesse scoffs. “Yeah,  _that_  was convincing.”  


“Shut up” is all she says in response. Talking may have seemed good in theory, but she’s realizing that in practice she actually really sucks at it.

 

Jesse leans back on the sofa and eyes her thoughtfully, making Beca’s insides twist with anxiety. After a moment he asks, “Is it about Chloe?”

 

“Huh?” She should have expected that, but she doesn’t. Beca scrunches up her face and shakes her head. “No. Please let that go,” she pleads.

 

“Sure,” Jesse says, in a tone that suggests he will not, in fact, be letting it go. Still, he moves the conversation along for now and demands that she spill whatever it is that’s making her “look like Jabba the Hutt just told you you’re about to be bantha poodoo.” Whatever the hell _that_ means.

 

Beca sighs, flicking at a loose thread in the seam of her jeans. “It’s no big deal,” she tries to insist. “We can just keep watching the movie.”

 

Jesse’s eyebrows go up. “Okay, something must be really wrong if  _you_  want to watch a movie.”

 

Beca bites her lip and slides her hands down to rest against the cushion beneath her. Hadn’t she just decided last night that she wants to try letting people in?

 

It’s just really fucking difficult, though.

 

“I just...” she starts, avoiding Jesse’s gaze. It’s probing, but not in a way that feels invasive. More like the way she imagines a concerned friend should look, and it’s this that compels her to continue. “My mom died,” she confesses. “That’s why I moved here.”

 

Jesse’s face flicks through a range of expressions – shock, pity, understanding – before he settles on solemn and apologetic. “Oh,” he breathes, barely above a whisper, as if he’s afraid of scaring Beca into clamming up again.

 

“But that’s... I’m dealing with it,” Beca says. And she is, mostly. She’s not  _fine_ , but she doesn’t think she’s completely failing to cope or anything. “My dad left when I was twelve and I hadn’t seen him until I had to move here to live with him,” she explains. “So I’ve just been fighting with him a lot?” She doesn’t know why she says it like it’s a question. Maybe she’s seeking some sort of reassurance that she isn’t a horrible person for not immediately falling into his arms after her mom’s death.

 

Jesse frowns. “That sucks,” he says solemnly, and it shouldn’t really be comforting to Beca but it is. Perhaps after so much time cutting herself off from social interaction, she’s just taking anything she can get.

 

Beca starts to tense as she continues her story, mentioning her argument with her father last night and then her aggressive discussion with Sheila this morning that led to her escaping the house. She doesn’t even realize she’s clenching her fingers at the memory of the stepmonster’s words until she hears the pop and tearing of the thick leather covering the sofa cushion.

 

Shit.

 

Beca leaps up from the sofa. “Shit!” she exclaims, taking a step back as if to disassociate herself from the damage. “I didn’t-”

 

“What the hell?”

 

Jesse doesn’t sound angry, which she should probably be grateful for, except that he’s staring at the new holes in his sofa with his jaw hanging open and Beca is certain there is no good way to explain this. Normal humans can’t just tear through leather with their bare hands like it’s nothing.

 

“Uh...” Beca wonders if it’s possible for the speech centers of her brain to spontaneously wither and die.

 

Jesse shakes his head, eyes flicking from the sofa to Beca and back. “How...?”

 

Fear grips at Beca’s heart like a vise, spreading through her until it feels as though she’s paralyzed.

 

She’s panicking. That’s what’s happening here, right? She’s panicking, because someone  _knows_  now, or has seen enough to be suspicious, anyway. And now she’s going to become a lab experiment. Her life is over-

 

“Beca?”

 

Beca jolts out of her haze of anxiety, wide eyes refocusing on Jesse. He still looks confused, but there’s concern there now, too. “What?” she croaks. She feels her hands shaking and quickly stuffs them in her pockets. Considering they’d gotten her into this mess in the first place, she figures that’s probably the safest place for them.

 

Jesse’s brows furrow. “Beca, what’s going on? What  _was_  that?”

 

Beca gulps and shrugs. “What was what?” she tries.

 

Jesse swings a hand in the direction of the torn sofa cushion with a “duh” expression on his face.

 

Beca doesn’t know what to do now, if she should tell him or keep trying to play it off. Maybe if she just knocks him unconscious and... No, that’s only a temporary solution at best.

 

She sort of wishes she’d taken that creative writing class in sophomore year now. A satisfying lie would have been hard enough to pull off even if she  _hadn’t_  freaked out like a moron.  


Sucking in a wary breath, Beca moves to settle herself on the coffee table instead of the ruined cushion. She keeps her hands in her pockets even though it’s awkward and crosses her ankles to prevent her feet from tapping nervously. “I don’t suppose you’d take ‘adrenaline rush’ as a suitable explanation?”

 

“Probably not,” Jesse agrees, sounding a little frustrated now by her dancing around the subject. “Come on, Beca. I’m not an idiot.”  


“No, that would be me,” Beca responds under her breath. Louder, she says, “No, I know. I just... wasn’t expecting to tell you – or anyone – about this. Ever.”  


“...Okay?”

 

Beca fidgets for a moment, then straightens her spine and fixes Jesse with a glare. “And if you ever tell anyone what I’m about to tell you, I’ll... I’ll break every bone in your body. Or something equally horrible, I don’t know. Just don’t tell anyone.”  


Jesse gulps. “Got it,” he says, and Beca can tell she’s managed to make him somewhat nervous with the sincerity in her tone, which is kind of pleasing. And not at all relevant right now. Keep it together, Beca.

 

“Okay,” she sighs, and then falls silent. Resolved as she is to tell him – and only the basics at that – she’s still scared shitless to be doing something she’d been instructed her whole life never to do.  


“Beca, you don’t-”  


“I’m an alien,” she blurts finally, tugging her hands from her pockets to gesture widely, as if she somehow needs to give a physical indication of the scale of this confession.

 

The expression on Jesse’s face makes it clear that this isn’t what he’d been expecting. She doesn’t know what else could possibly explain her ability to tear through leather like she’d just done, but maybe that’s her own biased point of view talking.

 

“You... what?” Jesse laughs, slow and uncertain.  


Maybe he thinks she’s insane now.

 

Looking around, Beca spots an empty soda can next to the bowl of popcorn and leans over to grab it. Keeping eye contact with Jesse now to make sure he’s paying attention, she crushes the can in her fist until it’s little more than a thin, crooked strip of aluminum and then adjusts to dangle it between thumb and forefinger in front of his face. It’s not the best demonstration of her powers, but she’s hoping it’s enough to get the basic message across without causing any more unnecessary damage to Jesse’s home. She already can’t afford to fix the sofa cushion.

 

“Alien,” she repeats. Her pounding heart is returning to its normal pace, settling back in her chest instead of her throat now that Jesse hasn’t immediately leaped up and called the police. Everything will be fine, she tells herself. Probably. Hopefully.  


Jesse starts nodding like a bobblehead toy, a slow and steady back-and-forth, until Beca gets tired of watching him and reaches out to press her index finger to the center of his forehead and halt the movement.  


“Enough of that,” she demands. “Please say something.”  


Jesse’s mouth flaps open and closed, but no sound comes out, and for a moment Beca wonders if she’s broken him.

 

But after another minute he opens his mouth again and actual words finally emerge. “You're not joking,” he says. She can’t tell if it’s a question or a realization so she just shrugs and waits for him to gather his thoughts.

 

“Like, for real,” Jesse continues, tone verging on incredulous now. “I feel like you’re messing with me.”

 

Beca purses her lips and gives a single shake of her head. “I’m not, dude.”

 

Jesse nods again, but manages to stop himself this time. “And you just tore through my couch with your bare hands. Wait, do you have claws?”

 

“What? No.” Beca holds up her hands as evidence. How would she even hide claws? Seriously. “I’m just strong,” she explains.

 

“Okay,” Jesse says, slow but like he’s starting to come to terms with the idea. “So you probably weren’t joking when you said you could break every bone in my body, either.”

 

Beca fixes him with a stare and says nothing.

 

Like he had when they first met, Jesse simply takes the threatening hostility in stride. “Can you do anything else?”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

Jesse shrugs. “I dunno. Like, can you read minds?” His eyes widen. “Are you reading my mind right now?”

 

Beca rolls her own eyes. “No, Jesse, I can’t read minds.”

 

“So you just have superhuman strength, then.”

 

“I didn’t say that,” Beca replies, eyebrow arched in challenge, a smirk dancing at the corner of her mouth.

 

She’s surprised by how easy this feels, now that the initial panic is over. She’d been told all her life not to reveal herself to anyone or else terrible things would happen, but  _fuck_  does it feel kind of good not to have this secret all to herself anymore (her dad doesn’t count, she’s still mad at him).

 

Don’t get her wrong, she’s still fucking terrified that this could all end up being a huge mistake. But the unexpected  _relief_  coursing through her is almost like a weight off her shoulders, one she’s always been strong enough to carry on her own, but that she’s only just now realizing she doesn’t have to.

 

Beca isn’t ready to tell Jesse everything, not yet, and maybe not ever. Though she does feel like this is the start to what her mother wanted – what  _she_  wants, Beca reminds herself. Because as much as it scares her, she thinks she  _does_  want it. To let people in.

 

“What else can you do, then?” Jesse asks, fingers curled over his knees as he leans forward in anticipation. There’s no more shock or bafflement or hesitation in his features now, only eager interest in the little Beca’s told him.

 

“Well, I can  _control_  minds...” she tells him, forcing an offhanded tone and averting her eyes. She taps a finger against her thigh and tries not to crack a smile.

 

“ _Seriously?_ ”

 

“Yep.” Beca nods, but she can no longer keep a straight face and starts laughing halfway through adding, “You should probably get yourself a tinfoil hat.”

 

Jesse pouts and slumps back against the couch. “Not cool. You had me going there for a second.”

 

Beca laughs again. “You’re so gullible, dude.”

 

“Well,  _excuse_  me,” Jesse huffs, “but you’re the first alien I’ve met. I don’t know what to expect.”

 

“Probably not whatever stupid stuff you’ve seen in movies.”

 

“I wasn’t thinking-”

 

“You definitely were.” Beca flicks the crushed soda can she’s still holding at him and it hits him in the chest.

 

“Hey!” Jesse brushes it aside and then leans forward again. “So, are you going to tell me what else you can do, or what?”

 

Beca considers how much she wants to show him. She’s decided to be more open, sure, but she isn’t quite ready to throw  _all_  her cards on the table.

 

“Fine,” she sighs, “I can fly, too. That’s all I’m telling you for now.”

 

Jesse gapes. “No kidding?” Beca shakes her head. “Damn, that’s awesome.”

 

Beca has never really thought of her powers as ‘awesome.’ Burdensome, inconvenient, occasionally terrifying? Sure. But she doesn’t think she has ever felt truly  _happy_  to be the way she is.

 

That’s a lot – too much – to unpack right now, though, and Beca isn’t sure she’s willing to trust Jesse with that much of herself, anyway. Not anytime soon. Accidental or not, she has already gone way beyond baby steps in this one day alone.

 

So she just shrugs and lets the comment go unaddressed.

 

Jesse doesn’t seem to notice her moment of hesitation. “Can you show me?” he asks, and does a little wiggle thing in his seat like some kid who can’t contain their excitement on Christmas morning.

 

“Dude, no. I’m not a trick pony.”

 

Jesse frowns, his eagerness deflating slightly. “And you won’t tell me if you have any other powers?”

 

“Nope.” Seeing the disappointment on his face, Beca amends, “Not today.”

 

Jesse nods. She appreciates his willingness to let her move at her own pace. “Okay, well, what planet are you from?”

 

“Don’t know.”

 

“How do you not know?”

 

Beca shrugs. “I don’t remember it. I came here when I was a baby. Or I was sent here. I don’t know.”

 

“And your parents...?”

 

Beca tugs at one of her shirtsleeves, sliding and twisting it around her wrist. “Aren’t my birth parents.” Or weren’t. Her gut churns uncomfortably. She pushes the thought away and continues. “That’s basically all I know.”

 

Jesse leans both forearms on his thighs and clasps his hands between his knees. “So, this is wild, huh?”

 

Beca huffs a laugh and hunches over, mirroring his position. “Yeah.” Her eyes drift back to the torn cushion then and she frowns, a crease forming between her brows. “Um, sorry about that.”

 

“What?” Jesse follows her gaze. “Oh, right.”

 

Beca unclasps her hands and reaches up to scratch at the back of her head. “...What do we do about it? I don’t think your parents would appreciate me destroying their furniture.”

 

Jesse narrows his eyes thoughtfully at the damage for a moment, before taking on what can only be described as an ‘ah ha!’ expression. He leaps up from his seat and pulls the cushion off the sofa, flipping it around so that the torn side is facing downward, and then settles it back into place.

 

“There,” he declares. “Good as new, right?”

 

“Sure.” Beca just hopes she’s not around when Jesse’s mom inevitably discovers the ruined cushion.

 

Jesse settles back into the sofa with a self-satisfied grin and Beca bites the inside of her cheek, glancing around in search of something else to discuss. She doesn’t want to talk about herself anymore, but she’s also not entirely ready to go back to the house where her dad and Sheila might still be waiting.

 

The bowl of popcorn sitting next to her catches her eye, reminding her that she never got to finish her breakfast before storming out of the house. Which sucks, because now she’s aware of the hunger gnawing at her empty stomach. She burns calories fast enough when she’s just sitting around mixing music. After flying around for an hour and then enduring an emotionally draining first round of ‘open yourself up to others,’ Beca feels like she could eat all of the remaining popcorn plus the bowl and still have room for about three dozen donuts.

 

“Hey, do you have anything more to eat than popcorn?”

 

* * *

 

After four Hot Pockets and an entire bag of chips, Beca decides she has probably taken enough of Jesse’s food, though he insists, despite his amazement at her appetite, that it isn’t a big deal. Either way, she has definitely had her fill of social interaction for the day.

 

She departs with an awkward goodbye and a half-hearted assurance that she’d talk to him at school on Monday.

 

Still reluctant to return to the house, Beca walks back through the park, back to her haven of sorts in the woods. She slides her headphones up to her ears and selects a playlist at random, kicking pinecones out of her path as she goes.

 

When she starts to tire of wandering through the trees and the satiety from her earlier snack wears off, Beca heaves a sigh and starts to make her way back to the house.

 

She wishes she had money on her, so she wouldn’t have to go back there just to eat. But there are downsides to running away from your problems, apparently, and this is one of them.

 

By the time Beca returns, it’s nearly dark out, and she can see her dad and Sheila sitting together in the living room downstairs. She’s definitely not in the mood for another confrontation, and the darkness should provide suitable cover at this point, so she sneaks back in via her bedroom window, leaping up and catching herself on the sill, then sliding the unlatched glass pane out of her way and shimmying inside.

 

She eats five different kinds of junk food for dinner and spends the next few hours working on her music and scratching out answers on her calculus assignment. Concerned texts from her father and curious ones from Jesse go ignored.

 

And when her dad cracks open her bedroom door later in the night, presumably to check that she’d made it home, Beca pretends to be asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, fear not about the lack of Chloe. This is a Bechloe fic, but it is also about Beca's personal growth so I do have to develop that before she's ready to open up in that deeper way. For now she's just stumbling blindly through the whole personal relationships thing. That said, there will be significant development of her friendship with Chloe in the next chapter, which I have already written and thus can guarantee it.
> 
> Thanks!


	5. Chapter 5

At school on Monday, Beca tries her best to avoid Jesse. She hasn’t spoken to him since she left his house Saturday and the fear and regret are starting to creep back into her consciousness, reminding her that she may have made the biggest mistake of her life not two full days ago. Except, she’s obviously not strapped to a lab table and being dissected, so the situation can’t be  _that_  bad.

 

Also, Jesse is in her second period class and they eat lunch at the same table almost every day, so it’s kind of hard to avoid him for long. Not to mention he’s still as persistent as the day they met, when he wants to be. And he does.

 

The second she sits down with her heaping lunch tray, Jesse leans forward and starts whispering questions at her in what he probably thinks are subtle references and turns of phrase. Beca swats at his face with a piece of celery when he gets too close and aims an unimpressed look his way. At least no one else is sitting at their table at the moment, otherwise she’d have to kill him, and she’s just really not in the mood to figure out the logistics of that today.

 

“Dude, be quiet,” she orders instead. “I’m not going to talk about this with you in a room full of people.”

 

“But you  _will_  talk about it?” Jesse asks, almost pleads. “Please? I have a ton of questions.”

 

“Maybe,” Beca hedges, taking a bite of her almost edible burger. “If you shut up and stop acting like a weirdo.”

 

“Sorry, it’s just not every day you find out your best friend is an...” He looks around, making sure no one else is in earshot, then whispers “alien.”

 

Beca eyes him strangely. “Since when are we best friends?” she asks. “Don’t you think Benji will be disappointed by the demotion?”

 

Jesse’s expression suggests she’s just said something incredibly stupid. “Uh, you can have more than one best friend, weirdo.”

 

“That doesn’t make any sense,” she counters. “The term ‘best’ should imply that there’s only one.”

 

“Well, you’re wrong. It’s completely possible to have multiple best friends. As many as four, actually.”

 

Beca’s inclined to take his word for it - it’s not as though she has a lot of experience in the area of friendship, after all – but also, this is Jesse, and for all she knows, he could have gotten this idea from a movie and be under the impression that he knows what he’s talking about when he really doesn’t. It wouldn’t be the first time.

 

She decides to just let him think he’s convinced her and nods as she sticks a baby carrot in her mouth and chews. “Sure.”

 

Jesse doesn’t say anything more for a few minutes, only stares at Beca as they eat their lunches. Beca tries her best to ignore him and his attempt at imploring puppy dog eyes (if she can withstand  _Chloe’s_  puppy eyes, then Jesse’s certainly don’t stand a chance) and focuses on pretending she isn’t upset that she forgot to pack more snacks in her bag today. But after five straight minutes of Jesse staring in silence, Beca is starting to get tired of having only the sound of chewing jaws and gurgling intestines for her ears to focus on (which, gross), and she can’t find the motivation to bend over and dig her headphones out of her backpack.

 

With a sigh, Beca returns her gaze to Jesse and flicks a tater tot at him. It hits him in the nose. “Stop looking at me like that, idiot.”

 

Jesse frowns and swats at where the tater tot had hit, thirty seconds too late. “Hey! Stop throwing things at me,” he whines.

 

Beca smirks. “You deserve it.”

 

“I really beg to differ,” he counters. “You throw too hard.”

 

Beca’s shrug is unapologetic. She hadn’t drawn any blood or undue attention, so that’s all that matters, really.

 

“But seriously,” Jesse says, guiding the conversation back to the topic she’s been trying to avoid all morning. “When  _can_  we talk about it?”

 

“We did talk about it.”

 

“Barely.”

 

Beca’s sorely tempted to throw more food at him, but she is also still hungry, and without any snacks in her bag, she’d hate to waste any more of it. “Fine,” she huffs. “We can talk after school.”

 

It’s not that she doesn’t  _want_  to tell Jesse more about herself, now that he knows the major thing. Well, okay, she  _doesn’t_ , but not because she feels like she can’t trust him – she’s actually surprised by how much she does trust him already. Rather, Beca’s afraid that revealing anything more about her abilities may scare him off. And then, yeah, she might have something to worry about in the trust department.

 

Actually, she’s afraid revealing her abilities to  _anyone_  would scare them off. Things like heat vision or the strength to lift entire buildings over her head aren’t exactly nonthreatening. Even her own parents barely held it together in the face of her frequently evolving power as she grew up. Her father  _did_  ultimately leave. What if the people she  _chooses_  to tell, like Jesse, end up leaving, too?

 

It’s all just a lot to think about, and Beca kind of prefers to avoid examining her personal issues and insecurities whenever possible, so she puts those thoughts aside for now. This is definitely a problem for later, she decides. The stress that feels like it’s squeezing at all of her internal organs thinks otherwise, but she tries her best to ignore that, too.

 

“Awesome.” Jesse grins at her, all appreciative eagerness, and pops the tater tot she’d thrown at him earlier into his mouth. Beca only rolls her eyes in response.

 

She leaves soon after, swinging her backpack over her shoulder with one hand and grabbing her empty tray with the other. Jesse calls out to tell her to meet him at the old bike racks behind the school, and Beca waves in acknowledgement before leaving the cafeteria, headphones already pulled out to slide over her ears.

 

* * *

 

Beca heads to the rear exit of the school fifteen minutes after the final bell rings for the day.

 

She finds Jesse sitting precariously on one of the looping bike racks, staring down at his phone screen. He doesn’t notice her approach at first, so she walks up to the rack he’s balanced on and gives the end of it a light kick, laughing when he nearly goes tumbling to the ground.

 

When he’s done complaining that she could have killed him, “or at least broken my phone!”, Beca takes a seat on an adjacent loop of the rack and crosses her arms over her chest.

 

She ignores the voice at the back of her head that tells her the move is a defense mechanism – and the second voice that reminds her of all the fears she feels the need to defend herself against. She’s committed to this now. She  _needs_  to find out how people other than her parents will react to knowing the truth about her. Acceptance feels like kind of an important component to Beca not being alone for the rest of her life.

 

At the sight of Beca’s nervous inhale, Jesse suggests they can take the discussion back to his house for more privacy – not that anyone is hanging around near the rusty old bike racks when school got out almost half an hour ago – but Beca quickly shakes her head. She’s not setting foot back in Jesse’s house until long after his mother (inevitably) discovers the damage she’d done to the sofa. It’s safer that way.

 

So she takes another breath, adjusts her uncomfortable position on the rack so she’s floating just barely above it instead, and fixes her gaze on Jesse.

 

“Okay, I’ll allow you three questions,” she declares, holding up three fingers so there’s no mistaking. She’d planned to let him ask whatever he wants, but Beca had decided on the way here that it’s more fun to mess with him. It helps calm her nerves, anyway, she thinks as Jesse juts his lower lip out in an exaggerated pout.

 

“Only three?”

 

“That’s one,” Beca replies, smirking. Yeah, definitely more fun. “You have two now.”

 

“Aw, come on!” Jesse whines, throwing his head back like a child having a tantrum. But he’s clearly too curious to keep it up because he swings his gaze back down to her a second later. “All right, fine. First question: What else can you do besides fly and destroy couch cushions and soda cans?”

 

Beca looks down and fidgets with her fingers in her lap. She’d known this was coming, of course – she’d been dreading it not five hours ago. But she’s once again reminded why making everything a ‘later’ problem instead of properly preparing herself is an inadvisable course of action, because she suddenly doesn’t know how or where to start. Should she jump right in with the laser eyes? Or start off soft with something less threatening, like the superhuman senses – maybe x-ray vision? Wait, is x-ray vision nonthreatening? It could be used for some unsavory acts of privacy invasion...

 

Beca is pretty sure she has lost all sense of how to gauge the relative weirdness of her powers, not that she’d ever really had it. She just sort of accepts them all as part of her now, though some more grudgingly so than others.

 

After a minute of deliberation that feels a lot longer, Beca decides to start with the superhuman senses and go from there. “Well, I can hear pretty well, I guess,” she tells him with all the eloquence she doesn’t possess. At Jesse’s raised eyebrow and unimpressed look, she elaborates, “Like, I can hear your heart pounding really hard right now, dude. Are you okay, by the way?”

 

Jesse waves off the concern and leans forward until he’s basically no longer sitting on the bike rack. “I’m just freaking out – in a good way.” Beca sighs her relief. “Also, that’s amazing.”

 

Beca continues before he can prompt her to describe what else she hears – she really doesn’t want to bring up the (she hopes) students sloppily making out under the bleachers down on the football field. “And I guess my eyes can work like a telescope or microscope depending on how I focus them? Plus there’s the x-ray vision, or whatever.” She’s hoping the offhanded tone she uses for the last part will offset the potential weirdness of that one, but the way Jesse seems to choke on his own saliva makes her think she’d missed the mark. She cuts in before words can come out of his gaping mouth. “Reminder you only have one question left.”

 

She’d really prefer to get all of this over with as soon as possible. She doesn’t have time to let Jesse fanboy over every ability she reveals.

 

Jesse’s mouth snaps shut at her words, but his unblinking (creepy) eyes remain focused on Beca, so she continues listing things as they come to mind, gauging his reaction (read: whether he looks like he’s about to take off running) with each one.

 

“Uh, I can move at the speed of light, I think,” she says, starting to tick them off on her fingers now. “Freeze breath – wow, that sounds stupid, but I don’t know how else to describe it. Also, I, like, can’t get injured or sick? I don’t know.” She bites her cheek, then adds, “And there’s the heat vision.”

 

Beca is glad in this moment that she can hear Jesse’s heart beating. Otherwise, she might fear it had stopped or something with the way he appears frozen in place. Beca has never really listed all of her powers in one go before, so she’s kind of startled herself by the realization of how many she actually has.

 

“And... that’s it,” she concludes with exactly zero flourish. To be fair, she had  _not_  listed confidence and flair among those abilities. “What’s your next question? And no, I won’t demonstrate anything, so choose wisely, Swanson.”

 

Jesse opens his mouth, but all that comes out is a squeak of his vocal cords as he practically vibrates with apparent giddiness.

 

It’s this last thing that has her sinking back down to the bike rack in utter relief. He’s not trembling in fear or running for the hills, so she thinks it’s safe to conclude that he doesn’t now believe Beca to be a terrifying alien monster... or something. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that she has tentative proof now that it might be okay to trust other people with this (massive) part of her. It kind of feels awesome in a way she had never expected to feel.

 

(Beca pretends her very next thought isn’t of Chloe and how she might react if Beca told her.)

 

“Okay,” Jesse says at last, seemingly recovered from his mental shutdown. “So, you’re basically a superhero.”

 

Beca’s nose scrunches up at the term and she gives a single, vehement shake of her head. “I’m not.”

 

“Uh, did you hear yourself just now? You’re a freakin’ superhero.” He interrupts himself to hold up a finger. “That question was rhetorical, by the way. It doesn’t count.”

 

Beca rolls her eyes. “I’m really not, dude,” she insists. “Ask your next question before I take it away from you.”

 

“Fine,” Jesse sighs. He adopts a thoughtful pose she’s pretty sure he’s just mimicking from some character in a movie, but he must sense that she’s losing her patience, because he drops it almost immediately and rests his hands on his thighs as he poses his next question. “Do you have a spaceship?”

 

Of course.

 

Beca thinks of the ridiculous UFOs he’s probably imagining from his movies and considers teasing him some more, but she really does want to return to her dad’s house and work on the mix she started this morning, so she shrugs and confirms that she did, in fact, arrive on this planet in a small spaceship. “It’s buried back where I used to live, though.”

 

Jesse perks up at this. “Seriously? We should go unbury it!”

 

Beca shoots him a look that clearly conveys her opinion on the state of his sanity. “I don’t think so. It’s like, twelve feet deep. How would we even do that?” she asks, and regrets opening her mouth almost instantly because of course Jesse is going to answer, and it will undoubtedly be the dumbest thing she has ever heard.

 

“I bet you could spin really fast into the ground like a drill,” he says, pulling out his phone and typing something in on the screen. “Here, look.” Against her will, Beca watches a YouTube clip of a cartoon animal of some sort doing that very thing, and rolls her eyes.

 

“Yeah, okay, I’m leaving.”

 

She stands up and hikes her backpack higher on her shoulders, spinning around on one sneakered heel. Jesse calls out to her as she walks away, but she doesn’t stop. She calls back that she’ll see him tomorrow and presses down on her laughter until she’s out of his line of sight.

 

Occupied as she is by her amusement at Jesse’s expense, Beca doesn’t notice the person coming around the corner from the opposite direction until she’s literally pressed against them. And she’d recognize the hair anywhere, which only makes the situation a thousand times worse.

 

Because how many times must she run into- “Chloe?!” Beca spits out the hair, makes a face. “Shit. Sorry.”

 

“Beca?” Chloe’s hands come up to wrap around Beca’s shoulders and steady herself. And Beca can’t actually be burned, but she swears that Chloe’s fingers are scorching her skin through the material of her jacket.

 

Beca opens her mouth and does an excellent impression of Jesse from five minutes ago when all that comes out is a squeak of surprise.

 

“Are you okay?” Chloe asks, sending Beca back to that first day they met. Chloe winks at her and Beca tries not to choke on the air she’s just remembering her lungs need. “We really have to stop doing that,” she teases.

 

Eventually, Beca manages an “uh huh” that sounds embarrassingly more like a groan and not at all convincing. Because she’s not okay, but it’s not due to the collision. Chloe’s hands are still on her shoulders and those impossible blue eyes are still gazing at her with all the concern of the last time they’d been in this situation, which is nuts because Chloe didn’t even know who Beca  _was_  then, so that only proves that Chloe is some kind of benevolent angel in disguise. It’s unfair, really.

 

Beca wonders how it’s possible to lose all faculties of speech simply because she has a pretty girl’s hands on her in a completely innocent manner. Is this some unknown side effect of her alien DNA? Something tells her it’s probably just because she’s super fucking awkward, but she’d like to blame it on the alien thing.

 

She would also prefer to blame the next words that spill from her mouth on some force beyond her control, and not on her painfully inadequate brain. “What are you doing here?” 

 

Honestly, she’d done better the first time. At least she’d managed some basic decency and reciprocated Chloe’s concern for her wellbeing. Now she just sounds like an asshole, which normally wouldn’t bother Beca, but now that she’s trying her hand at  _not_  pushing people away, her tendency to blurt out the wrong thing is more of a hindrance than a help.

 

To her confusion and relief, though, Chloe only laughs and drops her hands. “I was just on my way to the parking lot,” she explains. “Bellas practice ended early today because half the girls are out sick with mono.”

 

“Oh?” Beca doesn’t even know what to say to that. Does she even  _want_  an explanation?

 

“Yeah, I guess that’s the last time any of us share a water bottle with Stacie.”

 

Beca bites her lip. She’d met Stacie only once, but it was enough that she can agree that it probably wasn’t the wisest idea. “You didn’t share yours, I take it?”

 

Chloe shakes her head, ginger curls bouncing around her shoulders and seeming to capture flecks of golden afternoon sunlight in their strands. “Nope, thankfully,” she says, and Beca barely remembers to tune in and listen in time. “Aubrey didn’t, either. She’s pretty mad about the missed practice, since semi-finals are coming up soon.”

 

Beca scoffs, imagining Aubrey raging around the auditorium with a fist raised in the air, barking orders like a drill sergeant to the unfortunate few girls who aren’t out sick. “Yeah, I’ll bet.”

 

Chloe turns sparkling blue eyes on her and Beca employs all her willpower and then some to resist the look, because she knows what’s coming. “I don’t suppose I can use this dilemma of ours to convince you to join, can I?”

 

Beca shakes her head, hair whipping around her face at the force of it, in stark contrast to the light, graceful bounce of Chloe’s curls a moment ago. “Nope. Sorry, dude, but no. Not my thing.”

 

The flicker of disappointment on Chloe’s face makes Beca feel like she’s just kicked every puppy on Earth into the sun, but it disappears almost instantly to be replaced by a broad grin, leaving only Beca’s lingering guilt as a reminder.

 

“Okay, what are you doing right now, then?” Chloe asks, reaching out to grab at Beca again, this time wrapping a hand around Beca’s wrist where it hangs by her waist. Beca has to remind herself to check her skin for burn marks later.

 

“Uh. Why?”

 

Chloe’s grin stretches impossibly wider. “Because. We’re going to hang out.” It’s not a question, not that Beca could form a coherent response to it if it had been. “If you won’t join the Bellas, then I’ll just have to get to know you another way.” 

 

And because Beca is an awkward moron who can’t talk to pretty girls, she lets Chloe drag her away from the front of the school and down the street in the opposite direction of the house and the mixing equipment Beca had been fully intending to return to. She doesn’t say a word as Chloe leads the way past two blocks of shops and other businesses until they reach an old style ice cream parlor that seems strangely out of place amongst all the modernity surrounding it.

 

“Here,” Chloe says, demands, and Beca obediently follows her inside to take their place in the short line.

 

When Chloe glances back at Beca over her shoulder with a delighted grin, Beca can’t help but return it with a more subdued, nervous one of her own. After a moment, she manages to croak out a question.

 

“What are we doing here?”

 

“Getting ice cream, silly!”

 

A crease forms between Beca’s brows. “But why here? We passed a Dairy Queen and, like, two convenience stores on the way here. We could’ve gotten ice cream at any of those.”

 

Chloe rolls her eyes like Beca has just suggested they eat rocks out of the pothole outside instead. “Because the ice cream here is the best in the city and the crap we’d get at those other places is totes not worth it,” she declares. “This place is the tits. Trust me.”

 

And Beca does, for some reason, so she just shuts up and lets Chloe pull her along until they reach the front of the line.

 

While Chloe orders what she calls her usual – raspberry with chocolate sauce and “pretty” rainbow sprinkles – Beca stares at the overwhelming options behind the glass in front of her and once again wishes she’d remembered to bring snacks today, because she’s pretty sure she’s hungry enough to eat all twenty buckets of ice cream plus the multitude of toppings stacked in jars above them.

 

She ends up ordering approximately four scoops and five toppings too much and insists on paying despite Chloe’s protests, because there is no way she’s letting Chloe buy her a six-scoop bowl of ice cream when Chloe herself only got two. The clerk behind the counter looks at her with wide-eyed disbelief the entire time, but Beca is too focused on the unexpected look of endearment on Chloe’s face as she gazes at Beca to notice or care.

 

They find a seat by a window in one corner of the shop and settle in with their fancy glass dishes of ice cream and a pile of napkins. Beca pretends not to feel Chloe’s eyes on her as she assesses her six flavor options to decide where to start. She’d been so blinded by her lust for food that she’s only just now being struck by the embarrassment of her choice. She definitely should have aimed for moderation, but apparently there’s no end to the number of times she can manage to make a fool of herself in front of Chloe in one day.

 

When Beca finally makes a decision on her first bite and looks up, she sees Chloe grinning at her with what she can only describe as an unsettling gleam in her eyes. Beca doesn’t quite know what to make of it, so she just keeps shoving ice cream in her mouth as if that will make her seem like less of a nervous freak.

 

“Hungry?” Chloe asks, then takes a much more dignified bite of her own ice cream.

 

Not trusting her own voice since it has failed her multiple times already, Beca only nods. She twirls her spoon through her scoop of rocky road and hopes the sound she hears isn’t glass cracking under too much pressure.

 

“I missed lunch,” she says, because it’s the best explanation she can come up with.

 

Chloe’s face scrunches in adorable confusion – and  _when_  did Beca start describing anything as adorable? Yikes. “You did? I thought I saw you in the cafeteria.”

 

“Oh, yeah, um,” Beca gulps, but Chloe doesn’t seem to notice her panicked scrambling. “I just, uh, didn’t eat.”

 

“Oh.” Chloe frowns but doesn’t comment further on the matter. She takes another bite of ice cream that looks to be mostly rainbow sprinkles and smiles at Beca around her spoon when she catches her staring.

 

Beca flicks her gaze back to her dish and digs into a scoop at random, hoping her blush doesn’t show on her face. Seriously, she’s an alien. That shouldn’t be allowed to happen.

 

She can’t keep her eyes away for long, though, and looks up just as Chloe is drawing her spoon from her mouth, slow and transfixing in a way Beca will never admit aloud. “So, Beca Mitchell. Tell me more about yourself.”

 

Beca scratches at the back of her head with her free hand. “Uh, like what?”

 

Chloe shrugs. “I don’t know. Do you have any siblings?”

 

“Nope.” Not that she knows of, anyway. For all Beca knows, she has a hundred siblings back on whatever planet she came from. “You?” she asks, trying for that reciprocation thing she’d failed at earlier.

 

Chloe seems thrilled to be asked, at least. She straightens in her seat and tightens her grip on her spoon. “I do! Two older brothers,” she says. “They’re awesome.”

 

Beca finishes off her scoop of strawberry shortcake ice cream and tries not to smile like a cheesy idiot as she listens to Chloe describe each member of her immediate family with obvious love and affection. She may not be able to relate much to her sentiments, but Beca would be lying if she said she didn’t feel almost drawn to Chloe, to every word she says, every flicker of expression on her face. Beca may be invulnerable, but she swears Chloe Beale could bring her to her knees with one flutter of those Disney princess eyes. The problem is already that bad, and Beca is only just getting to know her.

 

It might be the scariest thing she has had to face since her mother’s death. The idea that there might be, that there already  _are_ , people in this world she thinks she could learn to care about the way Chloe so obviously cares – about her family, yes, but even the Bellas and random acquaintances, Beca has noticed. That she might start caring  _too_  much, beyond her control, and then end up losing them (losing  _Chloe_ , that asshole voice at the back of her head contributes unhelpfully) is more terrifying than the feelings of emptiness that drove her to reach out in the first place.

 

It’s all very confusing and more than Beca had been expecting to think about when she agreed to spend the afternoon with Chloe. And Chloe must notice something – probably the pinched expression on Beca’s face as though she’s just swallowed a sweaty gym sock and not decadent chocolate ice cream – because she stops describing the new toy she got for her dog and frowns at Beca in concern.

 

“Are you okay, Bec?”

 

“Hmm?” Beca forces herself to stop filling her mouth with ice cream as an excuse not to talk and sets down her spoon. “Sorry. I’m fine,” she answers. “Just thinking. Go on.”

 

But Chloe doesn’t, only keeps staring at Beca like she’s a particularly difficult puzzle to solve. “Maybe I should let you talk,” she says after an uncomfortable minute of Beca fidgeting in her seat under the scrutiny. “That is why I invited you here. I want to get to know you.”

 

Chloe reaches out and trails her fingers over Beca’s left hand where it rests next to her abandoned spoon. Beca swears if Chloe keeps up this casual touching thing, she’s going to spontaneously combust.

 

“Please?”

 

She wants to counter Chloe’s previous statement, tease her that ‘invited’ isn’t the most accurate term and then direct the conversation elsewhere. But maybe talking to Jesse has irrevocably loosened her tongue, or maybe it’s a combination of that and Chloe’s puppy eyes, because she finds an “Okay” spilling from her lips instead.

 

She tells Chloe about her mom, elaborating where she hadn't with Jesse on the nature of her death and how long Beca had spent dreading its inevitability. She talks about moving here to live with her father, the guy who left her at twelve without explanation and now expects her sudden forgiveness, how unhappy she is to be living in that house with him and the stepmonster. But something besides homelessness stops her from leaving, and Beca realizes as she talks that maybe it’s because somewhere deep inside, despite her protests, she  _does_  want to reconcile with her father. He is the only known family she has left, after all. And maybe opening herself up to Chloe and Jesse is bringing her around to the idea, too.

 

Chloe is all sympathetic smiles and more light touches as she talks, and Beca can tell she hadn’t really expected this level of confessional word vomit from her, but she also doesn’t seem to mind, and Beca takes immense comfort in that. She hadn’t been planning on  _talking_  about it, but the whole conversation is strangely cathartic, even though Beca feels somewhat sick with the effort of trying not to become outwardly emotional. She doesn’t know what it is about Chloe that makes her so easy to talk to, just lets it happen, because she knows that if she tries to put the conversation off for later, she’s liable to chicken out.  


When it all starts to feel like too much, though, Beca searches for a different avenue of conversation, one that’s less emotionally weighted but that won’t make it seem like she’s slamming a proverbial door in Chloe’s face.  


Tinny music from the shop’s overhead speakers catches Beca’s attention, making up her mind. She picks up her spoon again and drags it through her melting ice cream before speaking.  


“Anyway, I guess my music kind of helps me escape from all that crap,” she tells Chloe, taking a bite of what’s left of the mint chip.  


Chloe perks up, leaning over the table towards Beca until her hair almost falls in her ice cream dish. “Your music?”

 

Beca shrugs. “I just mix music in my free time?” She doesn’t know why she says it like it’s a question. Perhaps because she’s suddenly nervous of what Chloe will think. “I don’t know. It’s dumb.”

 

“No!” Chloe practically shouts, and Beca leans back, startled and wide-eyed at the vehemence in her tone. “That sounds  _awesome_.” Her eyes are gleaming so brightly, Beca’s afraid she’ll be blinded by them.

 

“It’s nothing, really,” she dismisses. Of course, it’s a lie. Music is of incalculable importance to her, but sharing just how much somehow seems more personal than what she had shared about her family. She hadn’t even  _mentioned_  her interest to Jesse, her supposed best friend.

 

The way Chloe is looking at her, she kind of regrets telling  _her_.

 

“Can I hear it?”

 

Beca halts her spoon halfway to her mouth. “Wh- what?”

 

“Your music. Can I listen to some of it?”

 

“I don’t- Um. Maybe later.” Much, much later. Beca isn’t ready to be  _that_  open. She really does feel like her music is a more private part of her than even her alien abilities, at times.  


She’s so busy staring at Chloe’s answering pout that she misses her mouth completely and ends up smearing mint green ice cream all over her chin.  


“Shit.”  


Beca drops her spoon again and reaches for the pile of napkins. Apparently no amount of superhuman abilities can undercut her tendency towards self-humiliation. With any luck, Chloe had gone temporarily blind in that moment and didn’t notice her bumbling ineptitude.  


But no. Instead, Chloe giggles, honest to god  _giggles_ , like some sort of fairy princess or some shit, all twinkling blue eyes and bouncing curls.  


Beca groans, inwardly at first, and then aloud as she wipes the mess from her face and Chloe looks on with an endeared grin.

 

“You know, you’ve only reinforced my interest in getting you to join the Bellas,” Chloe says after Beca is suitably cleaned up – and embarrassed.

 

“I don’t sing.” She feels totally justified now in regretting her split second decision to tell Chloe. She had  _just_  started to accept Beca’s lack of interest in joining a singing group.

 

“Fine,” Chloe says airily, but with an undertone of mischief that has Beca worrying about the future.

 

The conversation lulls after that, as Beca works on finishing her ice cream and Chloe ensures she has eaten every last rainbow sprinkle from her dish.

 

When she’s done, and still waiting for Beca, Chloe stands and stretches her arms above her head with a satisfied sigh. The motion causes Chloe’s shirt to tighten around her chest and rise above the top hem of her jeans, revealing the smooth expanse of skin underneath.

 

On par with the way her afternoon has been going, Beca doesn’t notice she’s bitten her spoon in half until the part that was inside her mouth is already traveling down her esophagus.

 

Fuck. Can she digest metal?

 

Her widened eyes flick down to the remaining piece of spoon, which she’s basically just holding to her lips now, then back up to Chloe, who is blessedly too preoccupied with fixing herself up to notice Beca’s dilemma.

 

Hastily, Beca shoves the spoon handle in her pocket and slides her chair back on the floor tiles with an ungodly screech. Chloe’s gaze darts back to her at the sound and she eyes Beca’s dish of unfinished ice cream in confusion.

 

“Are you done?”

 

Yes, because I just swallowed my fucking spoon so how am I supposed to finish it now? Beca doesn’t say. Instead, she mumbles something about her eyes being bigger than her stomach and sweeps both of their dishes up to dispose of them in the plastic bins above the trashcans. Chloe follows her to throw away the dirty napkins and then they make their way out of the shop.

 

On the sidewalk outside, Chloe stops and spins on a heel to face Beca. “Thanks for buying the ice cream, Beca.”  


“Sure,” Beca replies. “Sorry for, uh, unloading on you earlier.”  


Chloe swats at the air as if to knock Beca’s apology back out of it. “Don’t worry about that. I meant it when I said I wanted to know more about you and that stuff is part of the territory.” Her eyes and tone soften as she adds, “I’m glad you felt comfortable sharing it with me.”  


Beca bites her lip and nods, tucking her hands into the pockets of her jeans and suppressing a wince when her left brushes against the spoon handle in there.  


Chloe steps a little closer, prompting Beca to focus in on the thrumming of her heart beneath the pale pink jacket. She almost misses Chloe’s next words. “So, if I really can’t get you to join the Bellas, can I at least convince you to come watch our performance at semi-finals in a couple weeks?”  


And Beca had already told Jesse no when he begged her to attend the very same performance, but for some reason she finds herself agreeing to Chloe’s request, so apparently she’s doing this.

 

She can’t exactly change her mind now, she thinks, watching Chloe clap and bounce on her toes wearing a grin to rival the sun. There is no way she wants to risk bringing back that kicked-all-the-puppies look Chloe is so ruthlessly skilled at wielding.

 

She completely misses Chloe’s intention to hug her until it’s too late. Long arms wrap around her torso and squeeze, and Beca just stands there with her arms pressed to her sides like an idiot, though Chloe doesn’t seem to mind.

 

Once she’s finally released Beca, Chloe asks if she needs a ride home, but Beca tells her she can walk, so they part ways, Chloe back to the school lot where her car is parked and Beca in the direction of her dad’s house.

 

When she pushes through the front door eighteen minutes later, Beca finds her dad home earlier than usual, sitting at the dining table with a stack of essays and a red pen. She stops in the entryway for a moment and stares at his hunched form, thinking about the revelation she’d had earlier during her conversation with Chloe, about maybe wanting to start on the path to forgiving him. She waits until he looks up and makes eye contact with her, then purses her lips and nods in acknowledgment before making her way up the stairs without a word.

 

She’s kind of burnt out on being open for the next month, at least, so she decides to tackle that issue another day. Still, the acknowledgment is a start, and she knows that he knows that too, because he actually comes up to invite her to eat dinner with him and Sheila that night, instead of rightfully assuming she didn’t want to like he had since the day she’d moved in.

 

Beca declines with a shake of her head and a “Maybe tomorrow,” but the hint of progress lingers in the air after he leaves, and she settles in that night feeling overall not quite as shitty and empty and lonely as she had been in days past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still working on the next chapter, but I'll get it up as soon as I'm done. Thanks!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took a while. I’m not really happy with this chapter and it took me some time to get through, but I just wanted to get it posted so I could move on to the next. I’ve already got most everything else planned out and/or written, so ideally I will finish this fic by the end of the month, but I won’t make any promises. Thanks for your continued support! And apologies for any glaring mistakes since I didn't take the time to read this over before posting.

“That’s Alfredo.”

 

Beca doesn’t know how she ended up here, squished between Fat Amy and Stacie’s boobs on the loveseat in Chloe’s living room and being stared down by a dog so small she could probably stuff it in her pocket, but here she is.

 

“Oh,” she says, because nothing else comes to mind.

 

She is certain she has never thought anything more stupid, but she has the strangest feeling that the dog - Alfredo, apparently – is eyeing her because he  _knows_. Can dogs smell that she’s an alien? She’d never had pets growing up, so she can’t be sure if this is normal.

 

Either way, Alfredo is still staring, or maybe glaring, wisps of white fur partially obscuring his buggy brown eyes, and Chloe is grinning and looking between Beca and the dog like she expects them to run at each other like a couple of long lost companions.

 

The whole situation is just incredibly disconcerting, and Beca wonders once again how she got herself into it. She tries not to show this discomfort outwardly though, because Chloe is still watching and Beca really has been working on being less of an emotionally stunted asshole. Which, like her newfound friendships, is a definite work in progress.

 

This is the first time she has spent any extended period of time with Chloe since the ice cream parlor a week ago, and while she tells herself it’s because she’s been busy with schoolwork and mixes and not because she’s doing the same thing she did to Jesse and avoiding her, Beca has enough self-awareness to know it’s a lie. It’s just that she’s been festering in a pool of unease ever since her fingers tore through Jesse’s sofa, the waters rising and falling between each moment of vulnerability she’d shown in the past weeks, but never disappearing completely. As much as part of her feels strangely  _okay_  with sharing parts of herself with Jesse and Chloe and even with resolving to open up more to her dad in the near future, Beca feels as though she’s been walking on a knife’s edge that’s only grown thinner and thinner since her mom’s death.

 

It’s enough to make her want a drink at times. If not for the fact that she can’t even get drunk. And she had tried – even after a whole bottle of sacramental wine she’d stolen from the church basement after her mother’s funeral, she hadn’t felt so much as mildly tipsy, much to her disappointment at the time.

 

So in the absence of that potential release, she continues to resort to the familiar comfort of music, which, she muses, can sometimes feel like a drug to her in its own way.

 

She doesn’t have her music now, though.

 

Unfortunate, because she’d much rather the sounds of melding upbeats and downbeats to those of Amy’s growling stomach or the tight fabric at Stacie’s chest straining every time she takes a breath.

 

Alfredo takes a tiny step closer to her and Beca forces herself not to react.

 

“Do you have any pets, Beca?” Stacie asks, too close to her ear, and Beca jerks back, just barely avoiding slamming into Amy. She wonders if she imagines the suggestive lilt to Stacie’s voice when she says the word ‘pets.’

 

“Um, no.” Beca twists her fingers in her lap. Deciding the dog is the safer option, she stands abruptly and walks over to him, away from the uncomfortable press of girls she barely knows.

 

There are six more Bellas lingering in other rooms somewhere, other than those two and Chloe, who hasn’t moved from her seat in one of the armchairs. Lilly is also present, standing stock still behind a potted plant in a far corner of the room and staring through the leaves, but Beca is trying hard to pretend she hadn’t seen her.

 

What had started out as a ‘small get together’ (Chloe’s words) has quickly evolved into a minor party with all of the Bellas, plus Beca. Or maybe this had been Chloe’s idea of a ‘small’ get together all along, Beca can’t be sure. All she knows is that she’s overwhelmed, socially and sensorily.

 

She squats down when she reaches Alfredo, who she’s almost positive is about to snap at her when she holds a tentative hand out to him, but then he’s dancing around on his furry little legs, spinning in circles and yipping happily (she thinks). Beca gives him a ginger pat on the head, or tries to, and turns to look over her shoulder when she hears Chloe giggle.

 

“He likes you,” Chloe comments at Beca’s raised eyebrow.

 

Beca shrugs, stands, and shoves her hands in her pockets. She’s saved from having to say something like “I like him, too,” which she isn’t sure is entirely true, by the sudden arrival of three of the missing Bellas.

 

“Who wants snacks?” the freshman, Emily, exclaims. Jessica and Ashley, whom Beca has yet to determine the individual identities of, trail in after her. All three of them have their hands and arms laden down with snacks, and as Amy snags a bowl of chips and dip from Emily and settles back in her seat, Chloe leaps up to help them set everything out on the coffee table.

 

“Thanks, ladies!” Chloe says, brushing her hands together and straightening when they’re done. She turns to Beca. “Jessica and Ashley made most of this stuff. They’re awesome cooks,” she tells her, gesturing to some of the snacks on the table.

 

“Well, she’s the cook, really,” Jessica or Ashley says, gesturing to the other one. “I’m more the baker.” She points at a plate of cookies. Next to her, Ashley or Jessica nods.

 

“Well, you’re both aca-awesome!” Chloe declares, then turns back to grin at Beca.

 

Beca nods at Chloe, but she only has eyes for the food in that moment. She doesn’t care if  _Alfredo_  made the food, honestly. Okay, maybe she would a little, but mostly she just feels hunger gnawing at her stomach and guiding her feet over to the coffee table.

 

She leans over to grab from the nearest plate, swiping up some kind of mini sandwich, and only stops herself from shoving it in her mouth like a barbarian at the feeling of eyes on her. Chloe’s, as she’d expected, but also those of everyone else present, save Amy, who’s staring lovingly into the bowl of dip in the center of the chips.

 

She drops the sandwich away from her mouth slightly.

 

“Uh. I... Um. Yeah.” Beca would like to imagine that some of the words coming out of her mouth are attached to some sort of actual meaning, but the looks on their faces are a clear indication otherwise. “Thanks,” she manages finally, and raises the sandwich at Jessica and Ashley in some kind of awkward toast before taking a bite.

 

And barely manages to suppress a moan of approval. Chloe hadn’t been exaggerating, they  _are_  amazing.

 

Thankfully, Beca is spared further embarrassment as Aubrey sweeps into the living room in a manner not unlike a witch on a broom. Or perhaps that’s just Beca’s own clouded perception of her.

 

Aubrey stops just inside the entryway and rests her hands on her hips. “Chloe, did you move the karaoke machine? Flo and Cynthia Rose can’t find it in the basement.”

 

“Oh!” Chloe steps around the coffee table, past Beca, and Beca pretends the light, accidental brush of Chloe’s fingers against hers as she passes doesn’t make her shiver. “It’s up in my room. Let’s go get it.”

 

Karaoke? Beca stuffs the rest of her sandwich into her mouth and grabs two more, hoping she doesn’t look as nervous as she suddenly feels.

 

Really, she should have expected this. But it somehow hadn’t crossed her mind that there might be singing at the party of an a cappella group. And strangely, this reminder of her lack of foresight does nothing to make her feel better about her sudden fear of being dragged into the spotlight to sing karaoke. Beca isn’t sure she’ll be able to withstand Chloe’s puppy eyes if they’re directed at her continuously over the next however many hours of impending hell. And she doesn’t doubt that they will be.

 

When she hears Chloe and Aubrey returning down the stairs with the karaoke machine and Flo and Cynthia Rose meeting them at the bottom to help, Beca grabs three cookies and a handful of little pastry bite things that look delicious and hurries over to one of the two vacant armchairs before she ends up in another uncomfortable position with one or more Bellas. It also has the advantage of putting her back to Lilly, who’s still silently staring out at them from the plant leaves.

 

Almost as soon as she’s sat down, Alfredo hops up after her and curls his tiny body up on Beca’s lap. It’s only the memory of Chloe’s hopeful expression earlier - and the fact that she’d probably have to set some of her food down – that stops her from shoving him right back off. Instead, she grudgingly settles back into her seat and stuffs one of the savory pastry things into her mouth.

 

The rest of the girls return to the living room a moment later, Flo and Chloe lugging in the karaoke machine, complete with two microphones and a built in display screen for the lyrics. Cynthia Rose and Aubrey follow close behind, the latter resting her hands on her hips and nodding approvingly as they set up the machine on a small table that Stacie jumps up to drag in front of the television.

 

And then, much to Beca’s horror – which is only slightly mollified by the delicious snacks - the party appears to be in full swing.

 

One might expect that at a ‘wind down celebration’ the week before their semi-finals performance, the girls would want to rest their voices, but even Aubrey seems to be fully on board with this day of ‘fun,’ though Beca is still waiting for her to snap at any moment.

 

Beca manages to withstand Flo and Emily’s admittedly entertaining rendition of ‘Easy Lover’ and half of Fat Amy’s belting of Emeli Sandé’s ‘Next to Me’ before she runs out of food and has to nudge the dog off her lap to get more. She’s hoping that keeping her mouth full might deter anyone from suggesting she get up and sing.

 

Beca’s just settling back into her seat when Amy’s turn ends, and she looks up in time to see Chloe bouncing across the room to take the mic from her with a grateful, beaming smile that definitely doesn’t twist at Beca’s insides at all. The small smile on Beca’s own face is merely in response to the fact that the cookies Ashley or Jessica made are  _really_  good. That’s all.

 

Beca barely pays attention to the opening notes of Chloe’s song of choice, fixated as she is on the rolling of Chloe’s hips as she starts dancing along. Even Alfredo returning to her lap doesn’t faze her. Only the first lyrics spilling from Chloe’s lips let Beca know that she’s picked Demi Lovato’s ‘Confident.’

 

When Chloe starts incorporating her free hand into the dance she’s doing, sliding it up her left hip, skimming past her breast, over her collarbone, and up into her hair, Beca begins to feel too hot in her own skin. It’s rare that Beca ever breaks a sweat – even in hundred-degree weather she feels perfectly comfortable – but something about the way Chloe’s eyes seem to keep flicking to her throughout the performance causes heat and moisture to prickle at the back of Beca’s neck. She really hopes the rest of her isn’t noticeably flushed, or else she’s probably going to have to change schools again, and maybe countries, as well, because there’s no way she can show her face again after embarrassing herself in front of this many people. As it is, she’s having a really hard time not crushing the cookie in her hand into a pile of sugary dust.

 

Mercifully, the song ends after the longest three and a half minutes of Beca’s life and Chloe lets out a bright laugh as she hands the mic off to Stacie, who winks at her and slaps her ass as she walks back to her seat. Beca takes advantage of the break to get up and head into the kitchen for a drink, feeling only slightly apologetic that she dumps Alfredo onto the floor in her haste.

 

Stacie starts in on ‘Sex on Fire’ as Beca rounds the corner into the kitchen, but Beca hardly hears the music over the pounding of her own heart in her ears. She focuses on locating a glass amongst the cupboards and filling it with water from the sink. There’s a bowl of brightly colored punch on the counter that Beca strongly suspects is spiked and half a container of Jessica/Ashley’s cookies, but the cool tap water seems most appealing in that moment, so Beca chugs one glass and then another as if it will wash away the awkward feelings coursing through her, and is filling a third when she hears two sets of footsteps approaching behind her.

 

“Hey, shortstack,” Amy greets as she turns around.

 

Beca takes a sip of water and raises her eyebrows in lieu of returning the greeting.

 

Flo nods at her. She stirs the ladle through the vibrant red punch, but doesn’t refill her empty cup yet. “Chloe says you are coming to our performance next week?”

 

Beca shrugs, taking another sip before she answers. “Um, yeah. I guess. Maybe.” She glances over at Amy, who has paused her digging through the pantry to give Beca a  _look_  that she can’t decipher, but makes her uncomfortable. Beca quickly returns her attention to Flo.

 

She attempts to listen as Flo tells a story about a musical performance gone awry back in Guatemala, trying to react in the appropriate places, but she’s still thinking about Chloe singing and dancing and her strange inability to keep her shit together in the presence of this girl, so she probably only catches about half of what Flo’s saying by the end. Around a mouthful of peanut butter and jelly sandwich that Beca hadn’t even seen her make, Amy mentions having a similar experience herself, and Beca’s heard enough of Amy’s stories to know that this one will likely only baffle her entirely or scar her for life, so she sets her glass in the sink and excuses herself to the bathroom before Amy can launch into the full tale.

 

Halfway down the hall, Beca realizes she doesn’t actually know which door leads to the bathroom, which she doesn’t need anyway, so she veers into the only open doorway before someone can find her wandering aimlessly. The doorway turns out to open onto a staircase that Beca assumes goes down to the basement. Beca glances back over her shoulder to check that the coast is clear before taking the steps down two at a time – something she’s certain would have sent her tumbling down head over heels if not for her ability to fly compensating for the inadequate length of her legs.

 

She knows she probably shouldn’t be snooping around Chloe’s house like this, but Beca’s been accustomed to solitude for most of her life. She doesn’t hate hanging out with the Bellas – they’re actually rather entertaining in their own weird way – she just isn’t used to this level of socialization, and it’s doing a number on her already tumultuous mental state, which she’s been doing her very best to inadvisably ignore.

 

So, like every other feeling she doesn’t want to deal with, Beca pushes aside her sense of guilt and meanders her way through the dusty stacks of boxes and shelves of random knickknacks in Chloe’s expansive basement, dodging the odd piece of furniture here and there, but mostly keeping her hands to herself.

 

The Beales don't seem to use the basement for anything more than storage, but this in itself is revealing of the family’s character. Most of the boxes are labeled, neat handwriting in thick black marker indicating that each contains a set of memories – baby clothes or favorite childhood toys or something called ‘Chloe’s adventures’ that tempts Beca into peering through the cardboard to see a variety of items that appear to mark each of Chloe’s childhood hobbies throughout the years. There are similar boxes for each of Chloe’s brothers stacked underneath.

 

They’re clearly a sentimental bunch, which isn’t exactly surprising given Chloe’s generally cheerful and heartfelt demeanor. Even amongst boxes of old junk, the love and affection Chloe had expressed at the ice cream parlor a week ago is clear to see.

 

Beca hates the tiny stab of jealousy that springs up in her gut before she quickly shoves it back down. It’s stupid, she tells herself, to want something you can never have. She’d learned long ago not to fall into that trap. Still, as much as she doesn’t want to – not  _here_  – she can’t help thinking of her mom, her mind swirling with ‘what ifs’ for a painfully long moment before she manages to suppress those thoughts. This is not something to be addressed in Chloe Beale’s basement of all places. Keep it together, Beca.

 

Continuing her path through the maze of a basement, Beca manages to maintain her resolve not to touch anything until she steps around a tall stack of boxes and three matching floor lamps at the back end of the room and spots a dusty acoustic guitar leaning against an even dustier upright piano.

 

Her fingers instantly itch to touch the instruments, and because her brain reacts to music with about as much composure as it does pretty girls, Beca strides forward the last few feet and strums a finger over the rough strings of the guitar first. The act sends up a little cloud of dust along with the expected musical hum, although Beca can tell with just the one strum that the guitar is terribly out of tune. She idly wonders which of the Beales once picked up this instrument and, presumably, gave learning to play it their all for a while before their interests shifted to something else.

 

With her opposite hand, Beca slides her fingers over the piano keys, tapping out a brief tune, pleasantly surprised when it sounds the way it should. She brushes the dust on her fingertips off on her jeans and gives the whole setup a quick puff of air to blow most of the dust away. A lot of it just ends up swirling through the air and back into her face, but after she’s done sputtering and batting it away, Beca slides onto the piano bench and rests her fingers on the matte white keys.

 

She’s only ever had her keyboard at home, but the elderly music teacher at Beca’s elementary school had allowed Beca to play around on the old baby grand in her classroom on days when Beca’s teachers didn’t try forcing her to socialize out on the playground. The middle school choir teacher hadn’t been quite as generous with his instruments, and by freshman year of high school, Beca had learned the dangers of letting anyone see something as personal to her as her interest in music, keeping most of her music-making to her bedroom at home, which by then had become more electronic than acoustic anyway.

 

But piano had been one of the first instruments Beca taught herself. Drawing music from the delicate keys had posed a challenge for her then-uncontrolled strength, teaching her the art of having a light touch, lest her stubby little fingers shatter the ivory under too much enthusiasm. Barring the completion of her first mix, Beca had probably never been more proud of herself than that day near the end of second grade when she managed to tap out a full song without once stopping to ensure she kept her strength in check.

 

She had learned a number of other instruments since then, and her mixing equipment takes up most of her time nowadays, but as much as Beca pretends that sappy things like sentimentality are beneath her, the piano will always hold a special place within the fortifications of her heart.

 

Almost forgetting herself, Beca lets her fingers drift over the keys with a grace she lacks in most other aspects of her life. All of her earlier feelings of being awkward and out of place drift away, and she loses herself in the quiet melodies that emerge, confident she won’t be heard beneath the raucous laughter and chatter and singing going on upstairs.

 

She plays bits and pieces of songs from some of her recent mixes at first, drawing from memory to play each one by ear. She’s never known whether this skill is due to her enhanced alien hearing or is just a natural ability in the way it is for some humans, or maybe it’s a combination thereof. Whatever it is, she’s grateful for it.

After a few minutes, she grows bored of playing disjointed pieces. Mulling them over in her head, Beca works out a mash up of sorts that she thinks will work, then begins to play it out – and for something she had come up with on the fly, it’s not half bad, she thinks.

She continues playing, modifying as she goes, until the creak of a floorboard behind her startles Beca out of her headspace with the sudden reminder that she isn’t alone in this house. Freezing, dancing fingers now stiff and still against the keys, she listens to see if it was a fluke or if all of the Bellas had been watching her for a horrifyingly unknown length of time, but it’s only one heartbeat she hears behind her, and the person speaks before she can turn around.

“Aw, why’d you stop?”

 

Beca turns her head to watch Chloe approach. She knows her eyes must be wide as saucers because Chloe tosses her a comforting smile as she slides onto the bench beside Beca. Also because she might be freaking out. Just a little.

 

There definitely isn’t enough room for Chloe to sit where she is, but something in Beca’s brain short circuits when Chloe presses herself against Beca’s side and she doesn’t think to slide over and make room.

 

“You play beautifully,” Chloe praises, reaching out to plunk out a few random notes. The discordant sound is jarring, but it has the effect of shaking Beca out of her stupor.

She shrugs at Chloe’s compliment and slides her fingers off the keys, tangling them in her lap.

“I’m serious!” Chloe insists, turning slightly to capture Beca’s gaze. “You're awesome, Beca.” She swings her arm up and over Beca’s shoulders, tugging Beca into her side.

 

“Um. Thanks,” Beca mumbles, hoping Chloe can’t feel the heat radiating from her burning cheeks at this proximity.

 

Chloe grins and leans impossibly closer. “I’m really glad we became friends,” she whispers. Beca gulps. “I knew there was something special about you that day we met.”

 

Beca’s almost positive Chloe doesn’t mean the words in  _that_  way, but she panics anyway because she wasn’t even ready to tell Jesse, really, and the thought of Chloe just  _knowing_... But then Chloe’s tossing her a wink and Beca releases the air from her lungs, because of course she’s being stupid.

 

“I’m still waiting to hear your mixes, by the way.”

 

Beca gives a noncommittal grunt and finally slides down the bench a few inches to put some space between them. Following an awkward silence in which no promises from Beca are forthcoming, Chloe, seeming to sense as much, stands from the bench and grabs Beca’s hand to get her to do the same.

 

“Come on! You still haven’t done karaoke yet.”

 

And while Beca still refuses to sing, she reluctantly allows herself to be dragged back upstairs to rejoin the festivities, ignoring the twinge of disappointment she feels when Chloe lets go of her hand as they pass through the basement doorway.

 

She endures another hour of karaoke and fending off pleas for her to join in before coming up with a suitable excuse to leave. (She definitely doesn’t stay as long as she does just to make Chloe smile.)

 

(And she does  _not_  get distracted by thoughts of swaying hips and hands tangling in red hair when she scrolls past a Demi Lovato song while working on a mix later that night.)

 

* * *

 

The next week passes in a blur of half-assed assignments and quizzes Beca forgot to study for, interspersed with lunch periods spent ignoring Jesse’s begging to see her use her abilities and more avoidance of emotions and problems than is probably healthy. Beca feels like she only blinks and suddenly it’s Saturday and she’s dragging herself out of bed at an ungodly hour to go watch a high school a cappella competition that some part of herself that must hate the rest of her had agreed to attend.

 

Showered and dressed, she eats breakfast in her room and escapes out the window because she can hear Sheila downstairs and she’s been doing everything in her power to avoid the stepmonster whenever possible. Opening up more to her dad (eventually) does not mean she’s prepared to accept that woman as a parental figure at any point in the next century.

 

Beca takes the bus to Barden’s rival high school across town where the competition is being held. It’s a short walk from the nearest stop and she knows instantly that she’s found the right place because giant glittery banners reading ‘HIGH SCHOOL A CAPPELLA SEMI-FINALS’ practically slap her in the face the moment she sets foot on the campus.

 

She doesn’t run into Jesse or Chloe or anyone else she knows before the MC announces the start of the competition, so she finds a seat somewhere near the back of the auditorium and ignores the disapproving glances of the middle aged woman next to her when she pulls a pack of potato chips from her backpack as the MC drones on about hard work and talent.

 

Three teams go on before the Treblemakers finally take the stage, strutting out with more confidence than Beca thinks is warranted, especially given the regrettable style choice of maroon velvet jackets. Their school colors are green and gold, so she doesn’t even know where this look came from, but she finds it positively ridiculous and can’t wait to tease Jesse about it later.

 

Fashion nightmares aside, though, the boys are actually pretty good. Their arrangement is nothing special relative to the last three, but their execution of it has more finesse and the overall sound is a slight improvement on the rest. Beca wouldn't say she’s enjoying herself necessarily – fodder for future mockery of Jesse aside – but she isn’t hating it as much as she’d anticipated. It is music, after all, even if not a style she generally prefers.

 

She expects the Bellas to be brought out next, but some team called the Footnotes comes on instead, and she has to watch some kid who can’t possibly be in high school dance around the stage in oversized basketball shoes and squeak out ‘Blame it on the Boogie.’ The rest of the audience seems to like them, though, so Beca tries not to snort too loudly lest she incur the wrath of the ill-tempered mother beside her.

 

After the Footnotes trot offstage with waves to their adoring fans (AKA their overenthusiastic parents), the MC returns to announce the next performers, the Barden Bellas.

 

Beca thinks she should probably already know what to expect, considering she had spied on a Bellas practice only a few weeks earlier, but her memories of that day don’t seem to extend beyond flashes of bouncing curly hair and gently swaying hips and okay, Beca really needs to stop perving on Chloe when she dances.

 

The point is, Beca does not expect to see the Bellas walk onstage looking like flight attendants plucked straight out of a 1940s Pan Am advertisement, and she doesn’t expect their set to be as dated and boring as it is. They aren’t  _terrible_  – they  _sound_  good, at least (and she doesn’t just think this because Chloe has multiple solos) but they’re pretty lackluster overall. And she knows it’s not because they don’t know any better – they’d sung better songs at karaoke last weekend. 

 

Honestly, Beca thinks, she could put together a way better set. You know, if she were into this kind of thing. Which she’s not.

 

Their only saving grace is Fat Amy’s enthusiastic rendition of ‘Turn the Beat Around’ at the end. Aubrey’s satisfied smile as the whole thing comes to a close tells Beca all she needs to know about the reasoning behind this bland performance. Knowing Chloe and her personality, Beca doubts she had any say at all in the final product, co-captain or not.

 

To Beca’s relief, only two more performances follow the Bellas, after which the judges and MC waste no time in announcing the rankings. The Treblemakers win, the Footnotes somehow coming in second, and the Bellas just barely manage to edge out a placing position in third to move on to the finals. Beca has a feeling that if the lead singer in that last group hadn’t stumbled mid-performance, their set would have otherwise beat out the Bellas.

 

The MC hands out the trophies once all three teams are onstage. Beca sees Chloe look out into the audience when the Bellas are given theirs, and she’s half convinced she makes eye contact with her in that moment, that Chloe’s grins widens ever so slightly, but then she’s turning away and Beca has to remind herself that Chloe is human, and the likelihood of her seeing Beca at the back of the auditorium is slim.

 

Trophies awarded, everyone begins to disperse. Beca weaves her way through the crowds to get backstage and easily finds Jesse and the rest of his team celebrating their win. They see each other at the same time, and Jesse waves her over with a grin.

 

“BeCAW! Hey, you came!”

 

Beca rolls her eyes. “Don't call me that.”

 

She reaches out to tug at the collar of Jesse’s jacket. “What’s with this?”

 

“They’re awesome,” he says with complete sincerity.

 

“Sure, dude.”

 

Jesse shrugs off her sarcasm like it’s nothing, which is kind of offensive because Beca has worked really hard over the years to cultivate that perfect balance between dry and scathing.

 

“So, what’d you think?” Jesse asks. His teammates are still celebrating and dancing around with the trophy behind him, and he throws them a glance over his shoulder before turning back to await her response.

 

Beca rolls her lips inward, glances up to the rafters like she’s thinking it over, then returns her gaze to his and offers a pitying expression that’s only somewhat facetious. “I’m probably more embarrassed for you now than I was before,” she tells him with an unapologetic shrug.

 

Beca can’t tell if the offense in his tone as he responds is real or feigned, but she isn’t really paying attention, her focus drawn away by a familiar laugh across the room.

 

Chloe and the other Bellas are also celebrating their progression to the finals, laughing and embracing each other near the stage right entrance. Except for Aubrey, who Beca can hear lecturing the other girls on the need to step up their game for the next competition. Beca doesn’t know how she plans on doing that when the drastic change it would take seems like it might give Aubrey an ulcer or twelve. It probably doesn’t matter anyway, though, because her lecture appears to be falling on deaf ears.

 

“-gonna rock the competition at the state finals... Earth to Beca. Or wait - does that work for an alien? Is it offensive? Huh.” A pause. “Ohh, I see. I’ll pretend not to be offended.”

 

Beca finally tunes back into Jesse, frowning when she belatedly registers his words. “What?”

 

Jesse nods in the direction of the Bellas. “You should go congratulate her,” he says. “I mean, we’re gonna cream them in the finals but at least they made it, right?”

 

Beca levels him with an unimpressed look and glances back over at Chloe, who has her back to Beca now, arms wrapped around Lilly in the greatest show of bravery Beca’s ever seen. She doesn’t know when she stopped denying her feelings for Chloe to Jesse, but judging by the lack of smug teasing from him and insults or threats of violence from her, she’s clearly been failing at it for some time.

 

It’s weird, she thinks. She’d expected that opening herself up to people would be like pulling teeth. For so long, Beca had hidden behind her walls, trusting no one but herself, believing that even the smallest problems were hers alone to solve. She hadn’t needed anyone, hadn’t wanted anyone. So it’s weird, that she’s becoming comfortable now in the relationships she’s formed. Adjusting to having people in her life that aren’t her mom hasn’t been  _easy_ , exactly, but having friends, people she can talk to and trust, feels a lot nicer than she would have predicted. In retrospect, being alone all the time actually kind of sucks.

 

“Go on,” Jesse says when Beca doesn’t move. He gestures towards Chloe again. “Your heart is free. Have the courage to follow it.”

 

Beca eyes him strangely.

 

“It’s from  _Braveheart_ ,” he explains, exasperated. “I know the context isn’t the same, but-”

 

“Yeah, never seen it,” Beca cuts in.

 

“You’re seriously killing me, Beca. I  _will_  get you to sit down and watch a whole movie someday.”

 

Beca rolls her eyes. “Sure.” She starts backing away slowly, keeping her eyes on him and pointing a thumb over her shoulder. “I’m just gonna go...”

 

“Get the girl?” Jesse finishes teasingly.

 

Beca glares, but there’s no heat in it. “You're an idiot,” she says, and turns to push through the crowds.

 

“I may not be a smart man, but I know what love is!” Jesse calls after her.

 

She listens just long enough to hear the expected follow up – “ _Forrest Gump_!” – before tuning him out and making her way over to the Bellas.

 

Chloe doesn’t notice her coming at first, and Beca almost takes the opportunity to chicken out and leave, but for some reason she doesn’t want Chloe to think she didn’t show, so she crosses the last few feet to stand behind her.

 

Before Beca can even open her mouth, Amy sees her and announces her presence with an enthusiastic “Shortstack!”, and Beca’s last chance to run is gone. Chloe spins around with a blinding grin.

 

“Beca! I’m so glad you came!” She pulls her into a hug that Beca probably should have expected, but still she stands just as stiff and awkward as the previous times Chloe has hugged her. “Did you like our performance? You never saw any of our rehearsals.”

 

“Uh, yeah.” If she pretends she didn’t hear that last part it’s not technically a lie, right? Chloe just stares at her with hopeful eyes, and Beca tries to think of something more to say that won’t make her sound like an infatuated fool. “Um. You were great! Super awesome. Congrats, dude.”

 

Nailed it.

 

“Thanks!” Chloe beams. Beca hopes the dim backstage lighting obscures her blush.

 

“Right,” Beca says, scratching at the back of her head. “So, um, I’ll see you at school?”

Chloe’s disappointed, she can tell. But all of the Bellas are watching them – even if some have the decency to pretend otherwise – and Beca doesn’t know what else to say besides perhaps suggesting that Aubrey remove the stick up her ass before finals, and she suspects that wouldn’t go over well.

 

It’s unfortunate that her social skills haven’t magically improved in accordance with her newfound social life.

Beca tosses Chloe an awkward wave before she leaves and promises to herself as she walks away that she’ll talk to Chloe more on Monday, because disappointing Chloe Beale really does feel like kicking puppies.

 

* * *

 

Beca never runs into Chloe at school before lunch, so she resolves to find her then. In their shared psych class that morning, Jesse asks her how things went after they parted at semi-finals, and her responding grimace must tell him all he needs to know because he just offers her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder that she promptly shakes off.

 

She tries to pay attention in her next class upon hearing there’s an exam in three weeks, but for some reason her restraint on her powers keeps slipping, her hearing extending beyond the walls of the classroom and making it difficult to focus. If it happens to hone in on a particular redhead’s bubbly laugh at one point, well, that’s just a coincidence.

 

When the bell finally rings for the start of the first lunch period, Beca takes her time shoving her things back in her backpack, the way she does at the end of the day to avoid the crowds. She tells herself it’s because Chloe always arrives to the cafeteria later than she does, but truthfully she’s just trying to figure out what she’s going to say to her.

 

She really likes Chloe, more than she’d anticipated back when the girl was more Bellas-recruiter-slash-borderline-stalker than friend. Chloe has a knack for making Beca feel comfortable in a way few people (or maybe none) ever have, and with seemingly no effort. Maybe it’s her sunny personality – Beca’s learned by now that the  _actual_  sun fuels her powers, so that’s kind of an amusing thought – or maybe her complete lack of personal boundaries has helped her tear through Beca’s steel walls easier than most. Whatever it is, Chloe has a strange pull on Beca that she doesn’t completely understand, but is finding herself increasingly less opposed to. Chloe is... she’s just Chloe. So the thought of doing or saying something that might put a stop to whatever it is going on between them kind of makes Beca's throat constrict.

 

Or perhaps she’s just overthinking this whole thing and needs to get a hold of herself.

 

Beca hurries out of the classroom as soon as the teacher starts giving her weird looks and heads toward the cafeteria, scarfing down a snack cake on the way to help herself feel better. It doesn’t really work, but it tastes good.

 

Like a moth drawn to a flame, Beca spots Chloe across the room the moment she enters the cafeteria. She makes a beeline for her, ignoring Jesse’s idiotic gestures and exaggerated wink when she passes their usual table, because otherwise she might do something stupid like zap his lunch to a crisp with her eyes in front of all these people.

 

Chloe’s standing near the Bellas’ table, wearing a blue button up shirt that Beca knows makes her eyes pop, even if she can only her profile from where she is. She’s chatting with a cafeteria worker carrying a tub of dirty lunch trays in gloved hands and they’re smiling like a couple of old friends, which is kind of scary because Beca’s never seen that grumpy old woman smile  _once_  in the three months she’s been at Barden. Of course, Chloe could probably charm a dumpster into smelling better, so she shouldn’t be surprised.

 

Beca’s only made it halfway across the room when the lunch lady turns to go back to work. Chloe moves then, too, and Beca thinks she’s about to turn in her direction, notice her approach, and despite all efforts to the contrary, Beca’s heart rate picks up. She still doesn’t know what she’s even going to say to Chloe, just knows she wants to talk to her, wants to put a smile on her face like the one she’d had at the a cappella competition.

 

Music. That’s a good conversational topic. She’s totally got this, Beca tells herself.

 

And then a giant fucking monster crashes through the cafeteria’s glass wall.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t know if I really pulled off the whole action sequence thing, but here it is. Mentions of blood, injuries, and violence in this chapter. Thanks!

There’s a beat – just a second – after the creature crashes through the glass where everything seems to stand still. Beca doesn't know if it’s an effect of her ability to move at the speed of light or what, but she doesn’t have time to think about it because an instant later, everything and everyone around her is in chaos. Students and staff alike are running and screaming, trying to put distance between themselves and the hideous _thing_ standing amongst the destruction. But Beca can only stand there gaping like an idiot.

 

Maybe something about the knowledge that she’s basically indestructible messes with her fear response, Beca doesn’t know. She just knows that her life must be a big freaking joke, because of course, the one time she decides to go talk to Chloe of her own free will, some massive creature the size of an elephant has to come and break the school.  _Of course_.

 

Looking around, Beca realizes that she’d lost track of Chloe in the chaos. No flashes of flaming red hair catch her eye amidst the sea of panicked people, and she can only hope that Chloe made it out.

 

She does find Jesse though, or rather he finds her somehow. He runs towards her, against the current of fleeing people, until he’s standing at her side, breathing heavy from exertion or maybe panic.

 

“What-” he huffs after a moment, “What is that thing?”

 

Beca frowns. “Dude, how the hell should I know?”

 

“Well, it looks like an alien.”

 

Beca stares at thing, which, yeah, there’s no way that thing came from Earth. But what the fuck  _is_  it? It hasn’t moved since it busted through the window, crouched there amongst a spray of broken glass with what are probably its nostrils flaring, but the students and staff are still screaming and scrambling out of the room in fear, tripping over chairs and tables and each other. Some of the students that were nearest to the window have cuts from the broken glass, some are unconscious on the floor.

 

Forcing herself to focus, Beca pushes Jesse towards the doors as well, telling him to get out and find somewhere safe.

 

“What about you?” he asks.

 

Beca runs her fingers through her hair, sucking in a breath as she looks around at the chaos. “I... I have to find Chloe,” she says. “She was at the other end of the room. I have to make sure she got out.”

 

Beca had never imagined caring about someone this much, let alone multiple someones. It’s a different but not altogether unwelcome feeling, and maybe she’d dwell on it if not for the enormous ugly beast that suddenly looks like it has eyes only for Beca because holy shit. Talk about unwelcome attention.

 

Beca gives Jesse another push and tells him to run. “I’ll be fine,” she insists. And he gives in and runs, though she notices he can’t help but stop and help some people up on the way.

 

Beca turns at the sound of shifting glass and metal to see the creature lumbering across the cafeteria towards her, its long, scaly tail twitching, nostrils flaring, some kind of steaming fluid dripping from its gaping maw. Beca decides that’s a problem for when the thing is closer than thirty feet away and moving faster than the average slug, and turns to gaze across the cafeteria. She sees that the doors at the back of the room that lead to library, normally closed during lunch, are now open. It’s the nearest escape to where she last saw Chloe.

 

She starts moving towards it but hesitates, looking back at the creature still coming towards her and the handful of unconscious students scattered behind it. The cafeteria is emptied out now, Jesse among the last to leave, so it’s just Beca, standing in the middle of the room, and the helpless kids on the floor.

 

She doesn’t have to think long to know what she has to do.

 

Checking once more that no one is around to see her, Beca slides her backpack off her shoulders and drops it to the floor, her body tensing in anticipation of her next move. She waits for the creature to take one more lazy step forward, then braces herself and speeds past it to reach the nearest of the unconscious students. She checks the kid for any obvious internal injuries but she doesn’t really know what she’s looking for, so she stoops to pick him up and swing him gently over her shoulder because there’s nothing that can be done for him in here anyway. Or any of them.

 

Beca scoops up another kid lying a few feet away and nearly leaps out of her skin at the sudden ear-piercing screech directly behind her.

 

Maybe it had been the use of her speed, maybe it smelled her as she ran past, but whatever happened, she seems to have activated the creature, so to speak. It’s no longer interested in lumbering around, turning to stomp towards her now, screeching so loudly Beca’s ears throb in protest, and Beca runs past it again just before it reaches her. She rolls the two kids out the cafeteria door as gently as possible and spins to see the creature swinging its head around to relocate her.

 

For once, Beca is grateful for her small size. She figures she’s going to need the maneuverability it affords, because the thing is starting to look pissed.

 

Throwing caution to the wind, she runs past it again and grabs two more students just as it orients itself and starts to rush at her. She leaps over the charging beast to get to the door and send the two girls through it.

 

The last boy is more dazed than unconscious and as she swings him up into a fireman’s carry, she hopes he’s not aware enough to register the 5’2” new girl kicking heavy lunch tables aside like they’re plastic cups littering the floor.

 

Beca had never imagined herself saving people with her strange powers. What kind of idiot becomes a vigilante just because they can lift a semi-truck over their head? (Not that she’s tried, but she’s pretty sure she could do it.) It’s just not realistic. This isn’t one of Jesse’s dumb movies.

 

But it still hadn’t felt right to leave these kids behind just because she’s scared Chloe  _might_  be in danger. So she gets the last of them out and then slams the doors shut behind them in hopes of deterring the monster from chasing after the people who escaped that way.

 

But the thing only seems hell bent on coming after _her,_ because it rams into her from the side just as the doors close and sends her skidding across the cafeteria floor (she’s pretty sure she picks up some stains from that damn spaghetti special on the way), and then it comes leaping after her. Beca rolls out of the way of the descending mass just in time and counts her blessings because it cracks the floor tiles and rattles the entire room when it lands.

 

“Shit,” she wheezes, hands and knees pressed into the floor as she catches her breath post-impact. If she’d had any doubt before that the creature is alien, that’s wiped away now. Her ribs ache and she’s winded from the force of that thing slamming into her with a strength unlike anything she’s seen beyond her own. Beca doesn’t know if it actually matches or exceeds her in strength, but she isn’t interested in sticking around to find out.

 

In her periphery, she can see the creature get up and shake itself off to come after her again, so she pushes herself off the floor and runs, this time towards the library.

 

She’s only a few feet from the door when the ceiling ahead of her caves in and another creature lands amongst the debris. At first she thinks it’s the same one, that it somehow leaped up through the cafeteria ceiling and came in through the library, but then the original barrels into her from behind and sends her crashing into the one in front of her and nope, definitely a  _second_  alien monster. Awesome.

 

Beca pulls herself up and leaps over the second one just as claws she somehow hadn’t noticed before carve out a chunk of carpet where her head used to be. She has a fleeting thought that these things are after her because she, too, is an alien, but doesn’t have time to dwell on it as more claws come flying her way. She ducks behind one of the few bookshelves still left standing, out of sight of both creatures.

 

Her attempts to catch her breath are for naught, as it’s sucked from her again at the sound of a scream from beneath one of the shelves toppled like dominoes.

 

Sparing a thought to her identity – and the ever looming potential that she’d become a lab experiment if people find out about her – Beca brushes her hair back, tugs the hood of her sweatshirt over her head, and ties the drawstrings so tight around her neck that they’d choke her if such a thing were possible. Then she x-rays the downed bookshelves in search of the person who screamed and okay, yeah, there are three bodies under there and only one of them is moving and she’s pretty sure it’s Chloe, which absolutely does not help her state of panic.

 

She hears movement on the other side of the bookshelf she’s hiding behind and waits for the huffing creature to come a little closer before shoving the shelf over on top of it. She never liked reading much, anyway.

 

The creature screeches beneath the splintered wood but it doesn’t immediately break free and eat her, so she figures that’s a good sign. She doesn’t know where the other one went, though, doesn’t see it in the library anymore – which is a really  _bad_  sign, but also a problem for later. (Yeah, she’ll probably never learn to stop putting things off.)

 

For now, she rushes over to the nearest shelf crushing one of her fellow students, yanks it out of the way, and flings it across the room behind her. She hears glass shatter and briefly wonders if she could be expelled for that.

 

The person underneath the first shelf is Aubrey, and she’s breathing but bruised and unconscious, so Beca checks her for any serious injuries – even though she still barely knows what to look for. Not seeing anything super out of the ordinary save a broken arm, she picks Aubrey up and moves to hide her behind the relative safety of the librarian’s desk.

 

And  _shit,_ she nearly blasts the librarian with heat vision when she sees terrified eyes peering out from under the desk, but she stops herself just in time.

 

Beca dumps Aubrey unceremoniously beside the librarian and then leaps back over the desk to check on the other two bookshelf victims.

 

She doesn’t know why three students and a librarian are still in here when everyone else who escaped this way seems to have run out the doors leading into the halls of the school. But she doesn’t have time to contemplate it, because the creature she toppled with the bookshelf a moment ago is digging itself out and the other one is still nowhere to be found. She hurries over to the next shelf she remembers seeing someone under and tosses it away, aiming for the creature shaking itself off and mostly hitting home, knocking it back over.

 

Nice.

 

And it turns out she’d been right, it is Chloe under the shelf, and she’s blinking drywall dust out of her eyes so she doesn’t really see Beca, but Beca almost gives herself away, just barely stops herself from whispering a breathless “Oh god, Chloe” at the sight of her.

 

Her heart is pounding in her chest and she feels like she’s sweating for the first time in her life, but Beca manages to gather her wits enough to check Chloe over and then lift her up gently, careful of the bleeding gash on her forehead and the already swelling ankle.

 

If she deposits Chloe behind the desk with more care than she did Aubrey, well, no one is around to comment except maybe the librarian, but Beca’s pretty sure she passed out after seeing Beca practically fly a minute ago.

 

She runs to the last toppled shelf, tugging it up and off the person underneath, who turns out to be Flo. Like Aubrey, Flo is unconscious and sporting a broken bone, so Beca takes care not to jostle it as she moves her over behind the desk with the others.

 

She only gets a minute to catch her breath again – and okay, this is new. Stamina has never been a problem for her in the past – before the creature she’d crushed and subsequently clobbered with bookshelves starts running at her full tilt across the library, undeterred by the uneven surface presented by scattered books and broken shelves. She stumbles over another shelf when she tries to back away, nearly falling backward into the mess.

 

The light fixtures dangling from the ceiling catch her eye as she rights herself.

 

Beca feels like she processes everything in slow motion in the next moment, gaze flicking from the light to the creature and then back to the light. Just before the monster reaches her, Beca zaps the cords holding the closest light fixture in place, sending it hurtling down into the monster’s scaly face and buying her enough time to get out and put some distance between them before it starts after her again.

 

She runs towards the nearest door, the one leading out into the school, wanting to draw the thing away from Chloe and the others. She doesn’t register that this might be a bad idea until she hears screams coming from the classrooms as she runs past them and realizes she’s leading it further into a building full of people.

 

The damned beast seems to have no problem keeping up with her despite the damage she’d tried to inflict, so Beca picks up her speed, committed now to this game of cat and mouse as she leads it through hallway after hallway, careening around sharp corners and taking out walls on their way to an undetermined destination. All she knows is she has to get it out of the school and away from the people inside.

 

At last, Beca spots the glass doors leading out onto the sports fields behind the school and pushes herself to the limits of her speed to burst through the doors – no time to open them, she just crashes through the glass – and down the concrete staircase, running out to the middle of the football field before skidding to a stop, kicking up turf around her feet.

 

Except –  _fuck_  – she totally forgot that the adjacent track field is where everyone is supposed to go in an emergency that forces them to leave the school, and of course that’s where half the students and staff have gathered in the midst of all this terror and confusion. Just great. She was trying to get the thing  _away_  from people, not lead it straight to a five hundred-course meal.

 

Beca spots Jesse in amongst the crowd, gaping at her with a knowing look (which thankfully no one else in the crowd seems to share). Most everyone else doesn’t seem to give a shit about her (story of her life) and is instead focused on the ugly scaled beast sliding to a halt beside her.

 

She’s so distracted by all the people watching them that she doesn’t see the monster tensing to leap at her, and as she crashes into the dirt and grass, Beca has the absurd thought that it’s almost like the times she misses Chloe’s intent to hug her, only a hell of a lot more painful and with significantly fewer warm and fuzzy feelings. She hears the crowd of onlookers scream as the thing presses her into the ground with its weight, and beneath that, the sound of approaching sirens in the distance, which isn’t as encouraging to her as it might be to everyone else. It’s just more people she’ll probably have to keep this thing away from – not that she’s doing a great job of that at the moment. Not to mention, she still has no idea where the other one went.

 

And sure, the cops will have guns, but can bullets even kill these creatures? Can bullets kill  _her_  if she’s caught in the crossfire? Beca doesn't want to find out.

 

She’s yanked harshly back into the present moment when the creature’s claws reach out and swipe at her face, but she brings an arm up in defense just in time, catching the brunt of the attack there and feeling her flesh tear open where the claws meet it.

 

It’s almost unbearably painful and nothing like the ache she felt back when she used to use her ship as a punching bag, but she grits her teeth and pushes past it, kicking the creature off of her with both feet against its chest, sending it sailing across the football field and into the goal thing at the other end.

 

Wincing, Beca sits up, lifting a hand to confirm that her hood is still in place. She pauses for a second at seeing her own blood for the first time, running down her forearm and staining what’s left of the sleeve of her hoodie. It’s jarring, in the sense that it doesn’t look any different than human blood and yet it’s entirely unfamiliar at the same time.

 

She kind of wants to be sick, or at least panic, but knows that she can’t afford to do either right now.

 

Beca gazes across the field to where she’d kicked the alien. To her immense relief, the creature seems to be down for the count, at least for now. She speeds over, ignoring the murmurs of the crowd behind her, and surveys the damage.

 

The football team probably won’t have the home field advantage for a while, but at least the mangled goal post makes for a convenient means of restraining the alien. Beca wraps the metal poles around the thing and pushes them into the dirt to pin it to the ground, figuring it’s better than nothing. She doubts the handcuffs the approaching cops carry will do any good here.

 

A scream in the distance, back inside the school, reminds her that there’s still a second alien monster on the loose. Beca runs back to the gaping hole that she and the other alien had made in the wall without sparing another glance back at the creature or the people left on the field.

 

She finds the other creature and its disgusting, dripping mouth looming over a group of students who’d been hiding in the gym. Like the one that had first crashed into the cafeteria (she’d lost track of which is which), it’s barely moving, only staring at the gathering of people with flaring nostrils and twitching tail. Beca has time to take note of details she hadn’t registered before amidst the chaos – huge green eyes, triangular scales the shade of a twilit sky, intimidating barbed spikes running along its spine and down its tail – before it seems to hear or smell her and its massive head swings in her direction. She doesn’t know if these things want to eat her or just kill her but she’s sure as hell not going to stand around and try to reason with it.

 

She yells for the kids still cowering in fear beneath the basketball hoop to run and thankfully they don’t have to be told twice, practically stampeding over one another to get to the doors that lead out into the parking lot.

 

Watching to ensure they all make it out, she nearly misses the claws once again swiping at her face, which is a lot more terrifying now that she knows they can cause actual, painful damage to her.

 

Instead of ducking, Beca flies straight up into the rafters of the high gymnasium ceiling, grabbing onto one of the metal bars to stop herself from barreling right through the roof.

 

The creature leaps after her, but the rafters are too high and it must not be able to fly because it drops back to the ground before it can latch on to her. It’s determined, though. It tries a few more times to jump up to where Beca sits straddling a metal rafter beam before it finally gives up and settles for pacing slowly beneath her, waiting for her to come down.

 

The distance gives her time to come up with some kind of plan, but Beca has never been much of a forward thinker, preferring to act and react in the moment – and spending all of her time on music has done little to prepare her for something like this. Maybe Jesse would have some ideas based on cinematic fight scenes, but Beca only has inconveniently timed ideas for relevant mixes and the hope that no more of these things show up, because she’s really feeling the need for a quick three day nap at this point.

 

Beca shifts to crouch on the rafter beam, preparing to do  _something_ , but freezes when the creature swings its head up to look at her. She’s pretty sure it gives her a menacing grin when they make eye contact, but that might just be the exhaustion or blood loss getting to her.

 

Beca waits, but it just keeps  _staring_  at her like Fat Amy stared at that chip dip at the party.

 

The party. Beca thought  _that_  had been an unsettling situation.

 

Being targeted by alien monsters is a hundred times worse, it turns out.

 

She’ll never consider the Bellas overwhelming again after this is over. (Okay, she probably will. But she’ll take anything they can throw at her over  _this_  nonsense.)

 

Beca tries blasting the creature with her heat vision, but its stupid scales must be heat resistant because it barely flinches. It only seems to get angrier.

 

A burst of freeze breath in its face is a little more successful, stunning it long enough for Beca to leap down beside it and shoulder check it into the bleachers. The move kind of hurts, but it’s nothing compared to her still throbbing arm, so she shakes it off.

 

Creaking bleachers alert her to the recovered beast just in time and she dives out of the way right as it pounces, rolling until she’s flat on her back beneath the basketball hoop. She stares up at the metal and netting for a long second, chest heaving and mind swirling with frantic indecision. A quiet “Fuck” slips from her lips.

 

Knowing she doesn’t have any more time to lie there, Beca pushes herself to her feet and yanks the constricting hood off her head. No one is around to see her get slammed into the wall a moment later, anyway. Thankfully. That would have been embarrassing.

 

She leaves a Beca-sized dent in the wall when she gets herself free. The alien takes another swipe at her as she stumbles away from the crumbling brick, but she ducks out of the way, swinging up in the other direction with an uppercut she packs all of her strength into.

 

It sends the alien tumbling backwards into the opposite wall. The impact rattles the room and shatters more brick, destroying what was once a mural of the school mascot overlaid with the ‘BHS’ acronym in blocky green letters. Beca isn’t sure the damage is much of a loss, though, considering she’s never been able to determine what the mascot is even supposed to be.

 

She waits a moment, but the alien doesn’t get up again, and Beca is content to leave it be. It feels wrong to just leave two unconscious alien monsters on school grounds, but short of hiding them under her bed with her snacks, she doesn’t have anywhere she can take them.

 

Of course, she should never expect things to be that easy.

 

The moment Beca turns her back to leave, the solid force of a scaly tail slams into her from behind and knocks her into the air like a pop fly in the most unfortunate game of baseball. She tries to catch herself on the basketball hoop but only ends up yanking it free of its ceiling mount, bringing the whole thing down on top of her and the creature trying to capture her in its jaws.

 

Beca recovers first, sliding out from beneath the mess and dodging another swipe of the alien’s tail by flattening herself to the floor. It rears up before she can get to her feet and Beca scrambles for a way to defend herself, fingers clutching at empty air until they graze the cool metal edge of the hoop’s backboard. Frantic, she sinks her fingers into the edging and tears a chunk of it free.

 

Hot breath washes over her face, glistening teeth looming into view before Beca squeezes her eyes shut, tensing in fear. She brings her makeshift weapon up in front of her, clenched between both hands, as the creature descends upon her.

 

The sensation of sharp metal tearing into fleshy throat makes Beca want to gag, and she almost does when hot blood splatters her face before she can push the dead weight aside.

 

Heart pounding, Beca sits up and spits blood from her mouth, swiping at it with her intact sleeve, muttering an “Ugh” into the material. When her mouth and the rest of her face are clean, she sighs and glances at the creature lying immobile beside her.

 

She’s fairly certain it won’t be getting back up this time. The thought sort of makes her sick and she quickly looks away, forcing herself to focus on something else.

 

The wounds on her arm are already starting to heal. Not as quickly as the bruises she used to get after hitting her ship, but the flow of blood has mostly stopped and only the edges of the cuts still throb with pain. She wonders if there’d been something in the creature’s claws that affects her ability to heal, or if this is normal for her. Beca has no idea what is normal anymore.

 

Not wanting to look at her own blood any longer, either, Beca surveys the destruction of the gym. She’s half convinced the entire school is just going to collapse into a pile of dust and rubble around her, but it stays mercifully standing. Or perhaps unmercifully. She really doesn’t want to return to school after all of this.

 

Logically, she knows that none of this is her fault. Everything she’d done was to protect the school and the people in it. But guilt and fear still burn like acid in her chest. If this is the result of her  _helping_  people with her powers, what damage might she do if she ever lost control somehow? And maybe that’s unlikely, but what happens if she continues to attract more threats like the creatures she’d just fought within an inch of her life? Of other people’s lives...

 

Beca hears police, firemen, and ambulances arriving outside and decides she should probably get out of there and go pretend to be another helpless teenager amongst the masses, but then she remembers that she left Chloe injured in the library and all thoughts of her totally-normal-human image are forgotten as she rushes back through the halls.

 

Sometime in the last... however long it’s been – Beca has no idea how long she’d been fighting those things – the librarian had woken up, and now as Beca listens while making her way through the school, she can hear the woman attempting to assuage the fear of the three Bellas, all now conscious as well. Though she’s not really succeeding in convincing herself if the wavering of her own voice is any indication.

 

Beca slows to a normal human pace and pretends to stumble as she walks through the library doors, only just remembering to discard the hoodie that might be a dead giveaway to her being the freak who just flew around the school fighting alien monsters. She’ll come back for it later.

 

When Chloe sees her, she calls out a surprised “Beca!” and tries to stand, but her sprained or broken ankle sends her tumbling back to the ground. Beca has to resist super-speeding over and catching her, and instead just quickens her human pace to reach the librarian’s desk faster while Aubrey helps break Chloe’s fall with her one good arm.

 

Beca tries to push through the little swinging doors that lead behind the desk but they don’t budge for some reason, and she just ends up looking like an idiot while trying not to break through them with inhuman strength. With all four people behind the desk just staring at her, Beca gives an awkward laugh and then hoists herself up and over the doors instead. She stumbles a bit, still a little woozy from the wounds on her arm, but then she makes her way over to Chloe and drops down beside her.

 

“Are you okay?” she asks, resisting the urge to brush orange curls out of her face.

 

“Me?” Chloe returns, incredulous. “What about you? Where did you even come from?”

 

Aubrey glares, Flo and the librarian look confused, but Beca ignores all of them and tells Chloe simply, “I was trying to find you.”

 

Chloe leans forward and pulls Beca into a hug that Beca returns, if only a beat too late.

 

Yeah, she decides, sinking into Chloe’s embrace. The whole vigilante thing is probably (definitely) not for her – not for a good long while, anyway – but she’s certainly glad to be where she is now, in the warm and comforting arms of Chloe, safe and alive.

 

She knows there are still things to do. Hide her jacket and any other evidence of her secret, for one. And make sure the creature on the field hasn’t escaped.

 

But no one is dead because of her, at least.  _Chloe_  isn’t dead. That’s all that matters right now.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that this took a while to get out! Now you see why I didn’t make any promises about finishing this fic by the end of last month. I actually popped this chapter out pretty quickly once I finally got around to starting it so I apologize if it’s clunky shit. It’s not meant to be a very important chapter anyway, just a segue into the final leg of this story, but hopefully it’s okay. Thanks again for all of your comments and kudos!

Beca feels as though days have passed since she’d left that second creature in the gym, but knows it can’t have been more than half an hour at most. Various members of law enforcement and other emergency response teams are still lingering around the school grounds, along with an ever-growing horde of concerned parents.

 

And everyone is talking. About the alien monsters, about her – or about the hooded figure, anyway. Luckily she seems to have escaped recognition. Though, even the indirect attention is making her wildly uncomfortable.

 

Beca had spent a precious ten minutes with Chloe, ignoring Aubrey’s piercing glares, before EMTs had come bursting into the library searching for victims of the attack. In that time she’d learned the answer to her question (just the one, though) as Chloe had described how she and the other two Bellas stayed behind to help the elderly librarian escape in the mad rush to get away from the cafeteria monster. The explanation had hit Beca with a confusing mix of frustration and affection. Nothing about Chloe being in danger pleases her, and yet, the level of compassion that choice would require just screams Chloe Beale. Of course she would stay.

 

As much as she’d hated to leave, Beca had made herself scarce almost as soon as the EMTs arrived, wanting to avoid any focus on her wound and unnatural rate of healing. She’d told Chloe she needed to find Jesse, but in reality Beca had also needed time to gather herself in a moment of quiet solitude. With everything happening so quickly, she’d been starving for even a second of stillness.

 

After gaining temporary control over her frantic, scattered thoughts, Beca relocates her tattered and now too-recognizable hoodie and subsequently burns any evidence that it had ever existed.

 

She considers going back to Chloe when that’s done, but she and the rest of the injured students, as well as anyone else still hiding inside the classrooms, are already being evacuated from the school building, so Beca makes her way back out to the sports fields and tries to blend in.

 

Only, she nearly has a heart attack when she discovers the creature that’s meant to be pinned under a goal post has disappeared. Beca half expects it to emerge from thin air and lunge at her throat, but Jesse had somehow managed to find her again, and his well-timed appearance pulls Beca from the brink of a full-blown freak out.

 

“Hey, you okay?” Jesse asks. He almost seems wary, and Beca briefly wonders whether it’s out of fear of her and her powers after seeing what she’d done. Or perhaps it’s just because Beca still hasn’t learned how to turn her look of unapproachability down a notch or ten, and being strung out after an alien attack isn’t helpful in the slightest.

 

“I’m fine,” she answers, eyes flicking back to where the alien is supposed to be lying unconscious. It can’t be running loose again, can it? People would still be in danger (no, ‘people’ is not the first thing Beca’s mind supplied to begin that sentence. It was a lot more specific than that, but that hardly matters right now). “Where...?” Beca begins, and Jesse follows her gaze to fill in the blanks.

 

“Oh, yeah, some shady guys in suits already swooped in and took that thing away. They also took some samples of stuff – I don’t know what or why – but it was kind of awesome. Just like  _Men in Black_ , you know?”

 

“No.”

 

Jesse rolls his eyes. “Oh, right, I forgot who I was talking to for a minute.”

 

Beca frowns and looks back at the mess of a football field. Most of it has been cordoned off now, but people are still hovering just outside the plastic caution tape that’s rippling in the mild breeze. There’s no sign of Jesse’s men in suits, though, so Beca counts herself lucky that they haven’t stuck around. She figures they’ve already commandeered the creature in the gym by now, too. A quick scan of the school confirms it. They’re gone.

 

It’s kind of a relief, because on the one hand, Beca doesn’t know what she would have done if she’d had to take care of the creatures herself. But on the other, the men in suits thing is terrifyingly solid confirmation that there’s an actual organization out there somewhere with an interest in capturing aliens. Growing up, the concept had always been just that – a frightening idea her parents used to keep her from exposing herself. It’s all a lot more real now.

 

The sensation of fingers grazing her wounded forearm jerks Beca out of her reverie.

 

Jesse is staring at the streaks of dried blood on her pale skin with a frown. Beca quickly pulls her arm away, twisting it around to survey the damage herself, but it’s almost entirely healed now. All that remains of the gashes are a few thin pink lines.

 

“I thought you couldn’t...?” Jesse asks.

 

Beca shrugs, dropping her arm back to her side and attempting to scrub the dried blood off on the left thigh of her jeans. They’re already filthy, anyway. It’ll blend in with the spaghetti stains.

 

“I don’t know,” she says. “I guess the claws on those things were different.”

 

Jesse hums in apparent understanding, but his face is still pinched with concern, so Beca reaches out with her other arm and gives him a light shove.

 

“I’m fine, dude,” she assures him, and Jesse finally cracks a smile.

 

“So, you  _are_  a superhero.”

 

Beca scrunches her nose, vehement headshake shutting that idea down just as quickly as she had the last time he suggested it. “Ugh. No.”

 

Beca’s good deeds today must have been enough to have karma smile down upon her, because the approach of Fat Amy and a handful of other Bellas interrupts anything else Jesse might have said on the matter.

 

“Shortstack!” Amy calls out, prompting several people in the vicinity to turn and look at them. Beca grimaces.

 

“Hey, Amy.”

 

Many of the Bellas look Beca up and down, probably wondering at her haggard appearance.

 

“Have you seen Chloe, Aubrey, or Flo?” Cynthia Rose asks.

 

Beca can  _feel_  Jesse giving her a look, like he somehow knows she went to find Chloe first after it was all over. She refuses to confirm it by meeting his gaze, but her response to Cynthia Rose’s question does that anyway.

 

“Uh, yeah,” she says, scratching at the back of her head. “They were in the library when the second creature came in, but they’re mostly okay.” She doesn’t tell them that she’d x-rayed the girls herself, definitely doesn’t mention the parts of the library incident that involve her flinging bookshelves like paper airplanes or fighting deadly hell beasts, but they seem reassured by the little she does say. “I think the EMTs took them to the hospital already.”

 

The Bellas don’t stick around long after that, thanking Beca before going off to find their friends, or maybe a snack. Beca isn’t sure what to make of Amy’s explanation, and she definitely doesn’t want to dwell on the disturbing things Lilly adds under her breath as they walk away.

 

“Hey, so I’m gonna go find Benji and some of the other Treblemakers,” Jesse says after they’ve disappeared into the crowd. “Wanna come?”

 

Beca shakes her head. “No, uh, I think I’m just gonna...” She points to a lone bench at the far end of the sports fields, up against the fence that lines the school property. It’s unoccupied and undamaged by virtue of being far enough away from everyone and everything else, and even though her wounds are healed, Beca is realizing that the relative calm she’d cultivated after leaving Chloe in the library earlier is starting to wear off. She feels somehow drained and wired all at once, and it makes her feel kind of dizzy. At least, that’s what she believes the sensation is. Today has been filled with a lot of firsts for Beca.

 

After she and Jesse part ways, Beca trudges across the grass and slumps down on the bench. A shiny little placard screwed to the backrest proclaims that the bench is made of recycled plastic bags, which is maybe supposed to make up for the fact that it’s terribly uncomfortable, but Beca is beyond caring at this point, sinking into the rigid plastic with a sigh.

 

Jesse had called her a hero. Except, Beca can’t help feeling as though she’d inadvertently caused all of this because she thought she could pretend to be a normal human girl. A darker voice in the back of her head reminds her that she’d also let herself start to care about people again, only to almost lose them, too.

 

Beca barely stops herself from crushing the bench back into the plastic pulp from which it was made. She hates herself for letting this happen, even though the logical part of her brain tells her that she isn’t to blame.

 

She had thought she’d always be fine on her own. And then people like Chloe and Jesse and even some of their respective friends had wormed their way in and made Beca start to believe that her paranoid, overprotective parents had been wrong about what they’d told her that day in the cellar, that maybe it is okay for her to have people in her life and not be afraid to open up. God, had she been wrong.

 

She may not be responsible for her mother’s death, but Beca knows that this time, all of this – the damage and the pain and the fear – it’s because of her.

 

A few minutes pass with her there on the bench – or maybe it’s an hour, she couldn’t really say – before she hears her name being called amongst the cacophony of voices across the field. Looking up, Beca spots her father, squeezing past her frazzled looking psychology teacher and a pair of girls she doesn’t know hugging each other and crying. His head is swinging back and forth frantically, and when Beca focuses her senses on him, she hears his heavy breathing and pounding heart.

 

He calls her name again and Beca tries waving to get his attention, but she’s too far away. She hesitates a moment, watching him, until eventually she pushes herself off the bench and hurries over to him.

 

The instant he sees her, Beca’s father surges forward and sweeps her up in his arms. Beca is shocked enough that she just lets it happen, arms dangling at her sides because apparently she’s incapable of reciprocating a hug. She feels the rumble of his voice in his chest where her cheek is pressed against it, can smell his cologne and their laundry detergent in the threads of his tweed jacket, still hears his heart pounding behind his rib cage. It’s strangely comforting. Beca hasn’t been hugged by her father in over four years, but in this moment she almost feels like that little girl again.

 

She doesn’t process any of the words he’s saying at first, but eventually the sound starts to filter in over the pounding of his heart, and she listens to his quiet exclamations telling her how scared he’d been when he heard what happened.

 

When they finally part, Beca pulling away with an awkward cough while her father’s arms hang for a second too long in the empty space between them, they stand there in silence and avoid each other’s gaze for another long moment. It’s no wonder she hadn’t developed much in the way of social graces growing up.

 

“Are you okay?” her dad asks, at last.

 

Beca shrugs, the fingers of her right hand brushing absently over the still tender skin of her left forearm. “I’m fine.”

 

He isn’t satisfied by that response, she can tell. His imploring eyes bore into her and Beca fidgets, uncomfortable. She chews her lip for a second, considering, before she acquiesces, the words spilling from her mouth with less reluctance than she might have anticipated.

 

Beca gives her dad an overview of the fight, leaving out any details she thinks would draw an overemotional outburst from him. The hug was enough for one day. Still, he’s clearly upset about Beca using her powers. She doesn’t know if it’s fear or disappointment or some combination of both, but there’s also a hint of pride there in his eyes, so Beca chooses to focus on that.

 

By the end of her story, Beca feels as though she might be ready to really forgive her dad, because she may have downplayed it in her recount of events, but she probably could have died today and she doesn’t want to do that with him still thinking she completely hates his guts. They have a long way to go but they’ll be fine eventually, she thinks.

 

* * *

 

The students and school staff are permitted to leave the grounds not long after. The police had interviewed a number of them about the incident over the last couple of hours, but Beca manages to escape their radar until they’ve wrapped things up. One of the uniformed officers announces that the police cordon has been removed and everyone cheers, though Beca is certain that quite a few people have already managed to escape anyway.

 

She runs inside the empty building to retrieve a few things and then meets her dad at his car.

 

When she’d told him about Chloe, he had offered to drive her to the hospital to see her. Beca had almost refused, but it’s a half hour walk from the school and she doesn’t feel comfortable using her speed out in the open anymore now that aliens are the talk of the town. So she accepts the ride and tries not to sound like a love-struck idiot as she answers her father’s questions about her friend.

 

He drops her off at the emergency room entrance and tells her to be careful before driving off to park and wait. Tugging at the leather strap of the bag slung over her shoulder, Beca steps through the automatic glass doors and into the ER waiting area.

 

It’s busy enough that no one takes immediate notice of her arrival. The stern looking nurse at the desk is distracted by a woman bearing a remarkable likeness to the mom from the Addams Family, so Beca takes the chance to dart around the crowd lingering in the room and into the area with the line of beds holding patients who haven’t been admitted. Chloe's injuries hadn’t been life threatening as far as Beca could tell, so she hopes to find her in here.

 

She’s right. And she doesn’t even need her abilities to locate Chloe. The middle aged man with startling blue eyes above a familiar wide grin and the woman with flaming red hair standing three beds in couldn’t be anyone other than Chloe’s parents, Beca is certain. The bed itself is shielded by an ugly green curtain from this angle but she has little doubt that Chloe is behind it.

 

Nobody stops her as she makes her way over, but honestly, she would have fought another of those monsters just for the look on Chloe’s face when Beca rounds the edge of the curtain into her view.

 

God, that sounds sappy, but it’s kind of true.

 

“Beca!” Chloe exclaims, interrupting whatever she’d been saying to her parents. Her eyes are wide and bright, and no offense to Mr. Beale or anything but they’re still the bluest thing Beca’s ever seen and no one could wield them better than Chloe. She had been smiling already but somehow turns it up a notch or two for Beca, who tries to reciprocate but probably pulls off more of a nervous wince than a genuine smile.

 

Beca still feels guilty that Chloe is here in the first place, but despite her apparent inability to express it, she really is glad to see her smiling and relatively well. Chloe has bandages on her forehead and right arm, and the ankle Beca thought sprained is now wrapped up and likely to be aided by the crutches leaning against the edge of the bed, but she can’t be too bad off if she’s still smiling, so Beca takes some comfort in that.

 

Beca suffers through an awkward introduction between herself and Chloe’s parents – apparently Chloe has told them about her – before they pretend to give the girls some privacy and step out to close the curtain around the bed.

 

Chloe stares at her with an expectant smile and Beca fidgets with the strap of the bag for a moment before she realizes it’s part of the reason she’s here and slides it off her shoulder to thrust it forward.

 

“I, uh, brought you your bag,” she says, giving it a little shake as if it isn’t obvious that it’s the bag in question.

 

Chloe straightens up in the bed and reaches to take the bag from Beca’s outstretched hand. “Really? But I left it in the cafeteria. They let you back in?”

 

Beca shrugs. She technically hadn’t been allowed back inside the structurally unsound building, but she’d wanted her stuff and she wasn’t going to wait around for someone in a uniform to help her or refuse her when she’d more or less just done their job for them. She doesn’t tell Chloe this, though. Especially not with her parents lurking outside the curtain.

 

“I got someone to grab some things for me,” she says instead, hoping it’s believable enough to satisfy but not so vague as to elicit more questions.

 

Chloe’s smile softens. “Well, thank you, Beca.”

 

Beca nods, empty fingers twitching at her sides, wishing she still had something to occupy them. “So, how are you?” she asks when Chloe doesn’t say anything else. She’s used to the other girl being the conversation starter.

 

“I’m okay.” Chloe runs her thumb along one of the seams on her bag, a slow and steady back and forth. “I was scared, but... everything’s okay now,” she adds, voice low. “Aubrey and Flo will be fine, too. They had to get x-rays and casts, but they both only had minor fractures. And everyone else they brought in from the school will recover from their injuries. The nurse told me.”

 

Beca’s pretty sure the nurse isn’t allowed to tell Chloe some of that stuff, but she knows first hand how difficult it is to deny Chloe Beale anything so she doesn’t blame them.

 

“Good.” Beca pushes her hands into the pockets of her jeans and tries to think of a way to excuse herself, even though she sort of hates the thought of leaving. She shouldn’t want to be near Chloe, not after her proximity almost got the girl killed a mere few hours ago, but she wants this last moment with her friend before she has to push her away. Beca knows, after all of this, that it isn’t good for either of them if she lets herself remain close.

 

Before Beca can take a step back, start to put some distance between them, Chloe surges forward, leaning over the edge of the hospital bed to pull Beca close, even though it must jostle her injuries. And Beca probably shouldn’t be surprised by Chloe’s hugs anymore, but she’s caught off guard for a second, before she allows her arms to slip up and around Chloe’s waist and hug her back. Because it might be the last time.

 

Chloe is the first to pull back, and Beca’s heart drops in that instant, thinking she’s done something wrong, but it’s only so Chloe can tilt her head to the side and lean forward again, pressing a soft kiss to Beca’s cheek.

 

Beca is extremely grateful that Chloe isn’t the one who can hear people’s heartbeats. Although, she would surely see the furious blush once they’re more than an inch apart from each other.

 

“Thanks,” Chloe murmurs in her ear, and Beca hopes her gulp isn’t audible.

 

“For what?” she croaks, just as quiet.

 

Chloe gives her one more squeeze and then they separate, mercifully.

 

“For bringing me my bag,” Chloe responds with a light shrug. Her tone sounds weird, however, like that isn’t the whole truth. Beca can’t imagine what else Chloe could be thanking her for, though.

 

“Sure.”

 

Beca makes her escape after that, telling Chloe that her dad has been waiting a while and she should probably go – which isn’t a lie, even if she had only remembered this just now. They say their goodbyes and then she hurries back through the ER and out the sliding doors, past the ambulance bay and into the guest parking lot.

 

Following the sound of off-key humming to classical music, she locates her dad's car easily and slides into the passenger seat with little fanfare, smirking to herself when her dad startles at her sudden appearance.

 

“Hey,” he greets, hesitant. “How’d it go?”

 

Beca slides her seatbelt into place and gives him a shrug. “Fine.”

 

It doesn’t matter, anyway. He may be happy she’s made friends, but that’s about to end now. She can’t let it continue.

 

* * *

 

News of the alien attack had spread quickly, despite any attempts by the authorities to suppress or downplay it, and with the traffic caused by too many people detouring to see the damaged school, it took them nearly an hour to get from the hospital to the house.

 

As Beca pushes through the front door, every ounce of exhaustion she’s been ignoring seems to hit her all at once. Her bed practically calls to her and she’s eager to fall into it, but Sheila is standing there in the entryway when she and her father walk in.

 

Beca avoids looking at her as she slips off her filthy shoes and knocks them aside with her toe, wondering how the stepmonster is going to turn this mess at the school into Beca’s responsibility. The funny thing is, she wouldn’t even be wrong this time. It  _is_  Beca’s fault.

 

There are no accusations of blame, however, no knowing scoffs or judgmental glares. Instead, Beca finds herself swept up in her third – and by far most surprising – hug of the day. It’s quick and Beca doesn’t have time to reciprocate even if she’d wanted to, but unless something in the aliens’ claws has delayed hallucinogenic effects, it’s really happening. And it’s really weird.

 

“I’m glad you’re all right, Beca,” Sheila says, and Beca’s pretty sure she actually means it. So weird.

 

“Um, thanks.” Beca tugs her backpack higher on her shoulders and, after an awkward silence, sidesteps past her father and Sheila.

 

“I’m just gonna...” She releases one shoulder strap to point up the stairs, then walks away from this _Twilight Zone_ moment without another word.

 

Energy draining by the second, Beca heads directly to her room. She doesn’t bother to wash off the grime – though she’s sure she’s a mess – just tosses her backpack to the floor beside her desk and falls into bed in a slow collapse of limbs.

 

She’s out before her head hits the pillow.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh, I'm so sorry for how long it has taken me to write/post this. Life, you know? And I'm also sorry that this chapter isn't particularly my best work. I spent a while on it, but most of it just wasn't coming out the way I wanted and I was getting tired of it so I just decided to post it finally and not keep you guys waiting any longer. I have two more chapters to write after this, which hopefully won't take me as long. They'll both be wrap-up chapters of a sort, so I guess expect a sort of two-part epilogue coming your way. I thought of making it just one but I'll probably be able to get them out faster if I break it up. Anyway, hope you still enjoy this chapter and as always, thank you for your continued support in the form of kudos and comments!

They shut the school down for a month following the incident, to repair the damage that had been done and allow everyone to recover.

 

Beca spends the majority of this unscheduled break in her bedroom. Hunched over her desk with copious amounts of junk food, she pops out mix after mix as though her life depends on it, even tries her hand at writing some of her own stuff – and she’ll probably never let anyone else hear it, but she thinks that some of it turns out pretty decent. Her father tries a few times to coax her out, convince her to go see her friends, but he gives up after the first week. She’s actually been more open with him lately, speaking to him of her own free will, and she can tell he doesn’t want to do anything that might jeopardize this progress.

 

She ignores calls and texts on her phone, until eventually she turns the thing off altogether. Beca half expects Chloe or Jesse to come barging through her door at some point demanding an explanation, but she had always preferred to get away from her house when she spent time with them so she’s not even sure they know where she lives. Which is fine. She doesn’t know whether she’d be able to maintain her resolve if she actually had to face them.

 

Honestly, Beca had been under the impression that cutting ties with everyone would be simple, that she’d go back to how things used to be and resettle into the familiar comfort of solitude with ease. But in reality it feels like she’s been left to flounder in the deep end of a pool of burning guilt and doubt. She feels  _awful_. And it sucks, especially since she knows it’s the best choice. The safe choice.

 

Except, every time she tries to reassure herself of this, Beca can’t help thinking of her mom and what she would make of the situation. She’d made friends with Chloe and Jesse and the others in honor of what had essentially been the woman’s dying wish. But Beca is positive her mother wouldn’t have wanted her to be the reason people got hurt - her parents hadn’t kept her largely isolated as a child for no reason. So how does she balance the fulfillment of her mom’s warring desires for her? To not be alone forever, or to keep herself and those around her out of danger? Beca doesn’t think she can do both, and she wonders if her mother would be disappointed.

 

Though she tries not to, Beca wallows in these thoughts every day until the scheduled month finally draws to an end. And then stresses for a further five days when the repairs take longer than anticipated.

 

On the day the school reopens, Beca almost doesn’t go. But she’s so tired of sitting in her room for hours on end that she drags herself out of bed at six that morning and makes herself presentable, avoiding any of the hoodies hanging in her closet for fear of sparking recognition.

 

Determined not to continue the cycle she’d spiraled into during the break, Beca channels all of her willpower into  _not_  thinking about the people she’s been forced to abandon and everything this has made her feel, even goes so far as to use her powers to ensure she doesn’t run into them in the halls. She skips her class with Jesse and sits far from any Bellas in her other classes, no longer disappointed that she doesn’t have any with Chloe. Her willpower only extends so far.

 

The chatter diffusing through the school like a bad smell is a lot harder to avoid. It had been easy to ignore the news and social media when she’d been at home and usually alone, but here – in the very place where it had occurred, no less – it’s virtually impossible not to overhear the continued hype and speculation regarding the mysterious hooded savior. Some of the news outlets have apparently attempted to give her a cheesy moniker, but nothing has stuck, thankfully.

 

She’d hoped it all would have died down by now, that the excitement would pass and she’d drift back into obscurity and never need to do anything of that nature ever again. She had been terribly wrong, it turns out.

 

Some want her as their protector against future threats, others believe  _she’s_  the threat and want her locked up, but nobody had really lost interest in the topic. It’s all the sort of mess Beca never wanted to be involved in. Hell, she’s been trained to fear it since childhood. So to hear everyone talking about her, even unknowingly so, is like a nightmare come true.

 

As much as she’d thought she wanted to get out of the house, Beca is already second guessing herself by the time the bell rings for lunch. She feels anxious and guilty and she knows it’s going to be next to impossible to avoid her friends in the cafeteria, but she’s also hungry enough that she’s willing to risk it.

 

The library has been closed for the rest of year, the gym is no longer suitable for playing basketball, and the football team has to practice offsite now, but of course the kitchen still lives to put out crappy meals, so Beca makes her way to the cafeteria a few minutes after class ends.

 

When Beca walks through the doors, she’s struck by the relative quietude of the room. Before the incident it was always verging on painfully loud and packed with too many people, but today it’s more sparsely populated and the volume of conversation is below even her tolerance threshold. People are still talking, of course, and mostly about the incident, but it’s clear that everyone is still rattled despite the month of recovery time, and it doesn’t help that this is where it all began.

 

Beca spots Jesse and Benji already sitting at their usual table, so she ducks behind various students and support pillars, hurries through the line for her tray of food, and then slips back out the same way before they can notice her. She feels absurd, going to such extremes of avoidance, but then again, she’s never claimed to handle her problems well.

 

Other students are also avoiding the cafeteria, so she doesn’t look too strange walking through the halls with her lunch tray. Some of the kids she passes bear visible scars from that day, still puckered red and healing. She’d spotted casts on both Aubrey and Flo while trying to avoid them, and she knows Chloe is still on crutches, too. Yet more to feel guilty about, Beca thinks, eyes flicking down to her bare left forearm. She’d woken up the day after the attack without a mark on her, as if she’d never been injured at all. No lingering scars for her. Not visibly, anyway.

 

With nowhere else she can think of to go, Beca makes her way to the back of the school and out the doors she’d smashed through a month earlier. The glass has been replaced and the surrounding wall patched up, but she kind of expects it to crumble to bits when she pushes open the door with her elbow. It doesn’t, of course, so she walks over to the steps and sits on the top one, balancing her tray on her knees. She slides her backpack off her shoulders and swings it around her left side to sit on the step below her, unzips it, and tugs her headphones free.

 

Beca listens to her newest mixes as she eats, making mental notes on the parts she feels need tweaking. She stares across the sports fields in the distance, tries to keep her mind focused only on the music and not on all of the other things she’s been beating herself up over in the past weeks, until all that’s left of her lunch is a squishy grape that she nudges around the tray with her fork, a frown pressing down the corners of her mouth.

 

The click-tap of someone approaching only catches her attention once the person has already opened the door behind her, and Beca knows just by the unusual rhythm of the footsteps that it’s Chloe. She doesn’t run – even though she sort of wants to because, shit, she isn’t ready for this – but she doesn’t turn around, either. When Chloe’s crutches enter her peripheral vision, followed by the rest of her, Beca finally tilts her head to glance at the girl, sliding her headphones down to hang around her neck.

 

She watches as Chloe lowers herself down to the step, a bit awkwardly so with the crutches impeding her. Beca’s pretty sure it’s the only awkwardness Chloe has ever exhibited in her life. As for Beca, well, she’s almost convinced that awkwardness is actually one of her powers.

 

They sit in silence for a minute after Chloe gets settled, but apparently Chloe can’t last any longer than that, because a question bursts from her lips just as Beca twists to set her lunch tray aside.

 

“Are you okay?”

 

Beca’s brow furrows. “Wha- Me? Yeah, I’m fine.” Her frown returns and she stares down at her lap with inordinate concentration. She hadn’t even managed to make it a whole school day before her efforts at avoiding Chloe went flying out the window.

 

“Are you sure?”

 

Beca can feel Chloe’s eyes on her, but she resists the urge to look up and meet them. “Mhm, yeah. Totally fine.”

 

And Chloe smiles at her then, wide enough that it reaches her sparkling eyes and makes them crinkle at the corners, and  _fuck_  Beca is weak – she glances over for just a split second and then she can’t look away.

 

“Okay. Good,” Chloe says, with a sincere enthusiasm that Beca’s terribly unconvincing response didn’t deserve.

 

Beca nods like a bobblehead for a second before she’s finally able to tear her eyes away from Chloe, turning her head to hide a blush. Instead, she stares back out at the fields, cursing herself for reacting like this, like Chloe’s a warm light in the dark and she’s a hapless little moth. Honestly, she’s doing a terrible job of pushing the girl away at the moment.

 

“Are you?” Beca asks once she’s gathered her wits a bit, because she wants to distance herself from Chloe, sure, but she isn’t going to be an asshole to her. “Okay, I mean,” she clarifies.

 

“I’ll be all right. As soon as I get off these crutches.” She taps the one leaning on the steps between her and Beca. “The doctor says it should be soon. I’ll be healed in plenty of time for the a cappella finals. And Aubrey and Flo both claim they’ll be able to perform if they still have their casts on. We can totes still win,” she states, confident as ever.

 

Beca swings her gaze back to Chloe. “That’s still happening?”

 

“Of course!” Chloe almost seems offended by the suggestion that a literal alien attack would stop them from continuing their little singing competition. “Will you come watch again? It’s in Florida this time, it should be aca-awesome!”

 

Beca scrubs nervous hands over her thighs. She’s having a very hard time remembering why it is she’s meant to be pushing Chloe away, and the hopeful smile aimed at her is not at all helping her maintain her resolve. This is why she’d gone with avoidance.

 

By the time she responds with a hesitant nod and an uncertain “Sure,” it’s probably been too long – though Chloe still brightens with delight. And Beca isn’t sure if she’d just lied to her, isn’t sure she’ll actually go because she really shouldn’t, but in the moment, she’s kind of glad she’d said yes. She seriously can’t bear to see that kicked puppy look, like, ever again.

 

“Great!” Chloe replies, and her eyes take on an intensity that makes Beca’s insides twitch with a feeling she can’t fully define. It compels her to look away again.

 

But suddenly Chloe is a  _lot_  closer than she had been a moment ago and  _how_  had Beca not noticed her moving? She’s whispering in Beca’s ear before Beca can fully process the situation.

 

“You know, I’m really glad we’ve become such fast friends.”

 

Beca doesn’t know how to respond to that. Every intelligent thought in her brain has melted away and neurons have ceased firing due to how close Chloe is to being pressed up against her side. The best she can manage is a hum that lacks any sort of positive or negative inflection.

 

She nearly leaps out of her skin when Chloe whispers “Hey, Beca?”, warm breath swirling within the shell of Beca’s ear.

 

Beca musters a strangled “Yeah?” and Chloe shifts impossibly closer.

 

“Thanks for saving me.”

 

And if Beca’s heart hadn’t already stopped beating at Chloe’s unnecessary proximity, she’s relatively certain it would have at  _that_.

 

She tries to laugh, to play the comment off, but it comes out forced and awkward. “Wh- Uh... What do you mean? I didn’t-”

 

“You did.” There’s an undeniable knowing glint in Chloe’s eye and Beca gulps, nervous.

 

“I- I don’t-” She hopes she’s hallucinating or something because there’s no way Chloe knows, right?

 

“I  _know_ , Beca.” Well, shit. “I’ve known for a while, actually. The first time we met, it felt like I ran into a brick wall.” Chloe starts ticking off her fingers. “And don’t think I didn’t see you trying to hide the spoon you bit in half the first time we went for ice cream.” She still hasn’t seen the other half of that spoon since. “Also, I definitely heard you whisper my name when you lifted that bookshelf off of me.” Okay, Beca really needs to check her brain to mouth filter.

 

Her voice croaks when she asks, a tense thirty seconds later, “Am I really that obvious?” The thought terrifies her. She’s spent her entire life hiding who she is, fearing the consequences if the world were to find out. The idea that she hasn’t been hiding it well at all sends icy tendrils of fear down her spine.

 

Her panicked mental review of every life choice she has ever made is halted by Chloe’s voice, still in her ear but a little further away now. “Don't worry, Bec. It’s not like you’re obvious to  _everyone_. I just pay a little extra attention to you.”

 

When Beca finally dares to turn her head back, Chloe throws her a wink, and Beca nearly chokes on her own tongue. Her responding “Oh” comes out more like an embarrassing squeak. And then Chloe’s face is so close to her own again that Beca has to cross her eyes to see her properly.

 

“But for the record, I was paying attention before I started noticing the weird things.”

 

Awesome, now her crush (turns out admitting that isn’t quite as scary after facing down a pair of giant alien lizards) thinks she’s a weird, super-powered freak. Just great. So much for-

 

Chloe’s palm comes up to cup Beca’s cheek and Beca’s breath hitches. What is happening?

 

“I like weird,” Chloe whispers, because apparently she can read minds. She leans further into Beca, so close they’re practically a single entity at this point, and pauses just a second to give Beca the chance to pull away (she doesn’t) before leaning in the rest of the way and pressing her lips to Beca’s.

 

Beca is expecting something like the fabled fireworks when Chloe kisses her for the first time, but what she does feel – a calm sense of rightness – is somehow ten times better than clichéd explosions, and it makes her feel like she’s flying even with her ass firmly planted on the steps behind their battered school. She’s pretty sure that if she could get drunk it would feel like this.

 

It doesn’t last as long as Beca might like, but she remembers that humans do have to breathe more often than her alien lungs require, and she reluctantly pulls back. She feigns breathlessness for a moment, before realizing she doesn’t need to do that. Because Chloe  _knows_. It’s still slightly terrifying, but for some reason Beca is entirely certain that Chloe would never tell anyone. She trusts Chloe, just as she’d inexplicably trusted Jesse. Which is nuts because Beca still can’t recall any conscious decision on her part to put quite  _that_  much trust in these people.

 

When the rusty gears of Beca’s mind start turning again, she allows her eyes to refocus on Chloe’s face, taking in soft sparkling eyes above the gentle curve of a smile that makes her heart thud.

 

A lot of words pass through Beca’s head in that moment, like “wow” and “thank you” and “holy fuck can we do that again,” but she is immensely grateful that none of them manage to escape. Instead, she breathes a quiet sigh and sits back just enough that she can think clearly without Chloe’s lips so close.

 

And she must look as dazed as she feels, because Chloe giggles as soon as her own eyes flutter open.

 

“What?” Beca whispers, suddenly self-conscious. Her nervous fingers scratch at the step beneath them, creating a pile of cement dust in the grooves she leaves behind before she realizes what she’s doing and yanks her hands back to rest in her lap.

 

Chloe glances from the mess to Beca and then giggles again. “You’re cute.”

 

Beca’s eyebrows lift into her hairline. “Okay, I have to be hallucinating right now.”

 

Chloe reaches out, fingers wrapping around one of Beca’s wrists. “I’m serious, Beca. About everything,” she insists. “I’m glad we became friends. And I’m  _really_  glad you saved my life.”

 

“Oh. Well, I didn’t exactly-”

 

“Beca.” Chloe brings her free hand up to press a finger to Beca’s lips. “Just tell me you like me too and kiss me again.”

 

Beca’s eyes widen. “O-okay.” Then she does, because she’s a sucker for this girl and her thoughts are still rather hazy, anyway.

 

Though just as intoxicating, this kiss is quicker than the last, and Beca is reluctant to pull back when she does, but there’s a thought itching at the back of her mind and everything is happening so fast, even for her, that she feels the need to slow things down a bit.

 

“Chloe, I-”

 

The end of lunch bell rings, cutting her off before she even manages to gather her thoughts. Which is maybe a blessing in disguise, because she’s not entirely certain something regrettable wouldn’t have come out of her mouth.

 

Beca quickly pushes herself to her feet, swinging her backpack onto her left shoulder and then reaching down to help Chloe up. She bends to grab Chloe’s crutches next and hands them over.

 

Chloe thanks her, wearing that soft smile she had given Beca earlier, though she drops it to fix her with a more serious look after a second. “We’ll talk later?” Chloe asks, with a sure tone that makes it sound as though it’s not really a question at all, because of course she knows that Beca has been avoiding her.

 

Beca nods, still not trusting her own mouth. She snags her lunch tray off the steps, ignoring the grape that goes flying as she does, then hurries ahead to open the door for Chloe.

 

They go their separate ways after that, and Beca feels like an idiot for wishing she could keep the sensation of Chloe’s lips on hers forever, but she does. She goes to class and doesn’t pay attention for the rest of the day.

 

* * *

 

It isn’t until later, once she’s home and alone again, that Beca realizes how stupid she’d been, allowing Chloe to worm her way back in without a second thought.

 

The kiss was amazing and Beca has a lot of feelings about it, but that really only highlights why she shouldn’t be doing this, because it would fucking tear her apart if Chloe got hurt (again) because of her. She feels like an idiot for faltering in her resolve and it only makes her feel worse to remind herself that she can’t, in good conscience, let this burgeoning thing with Chloe continue.

 

Beca returns to her familiar wallowing and berates herself and her poor self control for the better part of a few hours as she makes absentminded changes to her mixes that she’ll probably just end up scrapping later. She doesn’t even realize how late it has gotten until her dad comes up to fetch her for dinner.

 

“Hey, Bec,” he greets, standing in her open doorway. “How was your first day back?”

 

She doesn’t respond, lips pressed tight and brows drawn as she absently twists a dial back and forth on her mixing board.

 

“That well, huh?”

 

He makes his way into the room and lowers himself onto the end of her bed. Beca keeps her back to him.

 

“You want to talk about what’s bothering you?” She wants to ask how he knows, but she’s pretty sure the turmoil is written all over her face. “It’s okay if you don’t.” The way he says it is tentative, as though he doesn’t want her to lash out at him for his concern. And she might have, in the past. But a lot has happened in the last few months and now Beca is feeling like she has no one else but her father to talk to about her life.

 

She tries not to think about how pathetic that makes her feel.

 

Her dad seems to take it as invitation to stay when she doesn’t immediately send him away, but she remains with her back to him for a few minutes, contemplating what to say.

 

Eventually, she stops fiddling with the mixing board dial and spins ninety degrees in her desk chair, half facing him and half not. “I think I fucked up, Dad.”

 

The fact that he doesn’t chastise her for cursing as she’d expected tells her he’s actually concerned enough to hear her out, and this compels Beca to continue.

 

“Someone knows about me,” she confesses, tilting her head back to puff out a sigh between pursed lips. “Actually, two someones. I guess.”

 

This time, he does react to her words. Beca sees him stiffen and frown out of the corner of her eye, but doesn’t turn to face him better, waiting for him to say something.

 

“Someone  _knows_?” he exclaims at last, and his voice sounds almost tremulous. “Who? Do we- Do we need to run?”

 

“What?” Beca finally spins to face him, a line of shock and confusion carving the space between her brows. She’d been expecting anger, disbelief maybe, but not this, not blatant fear. “ _Run_?” she echoes, incredulous. “I don’t- No. I don’t think so.”

 

“Beca, if you aren’t safe here-”

 

“Dad, no,” Beca interrupts. “It’s not like that. It’s Chloe and Jesse.”

 

Her father falters in his unfamiliar panic. “Your friends?”

 

Beca captures her bottom lip with her teeth and offers him a shrug before releasing it again. She gazes down at her hands and responds, “Yeah.”

 

He’s quiet for a long moment, long enough for Beca to start beating herself up again over her poor life choices. Until, finally, he asks the question she had somehow never needed to consciously ask herself.

 

“Do you trust them?”

 

Her answer, of course, is that inexplicable but resounding “Yes.”

 

They may be weirdos, but they’re the most kind hearted people Beca has ever known and she honestly believes that they would never do anything to hurt her, meaning her secret is completely safe with them.

 

“Okay,” her dad says on a sigh, and Beca’s muscles relax along with his, some of the tension seeping from the room. “Good.” A pause, then “Are you sure?”

 

Beca releases a breathy chuckle and scrapes the fingers of her left hand backwards through her hair. “Yeah. As sure as I can be.”

 

Her father smiles then, clearly relieved, and she waits for him to comment further. She’d been anticipating disapproval, so she doesn’t know what to make of the turn this conversation has taken.

 

“I’m really glad you have friends you can trust like that, Bec.”

 

Beca doesn’t say anything, but he must sense the hesitation in whatever physical response she gives to his words, because his smile dips into a frown as he asks, “What’s wrong?”

 

“I don’t know. It’s just...” She twists her chair slightly so that she’s facing away from him again. “Mom would be disappointed.”

 

And now it’s his turn to be confused. “By what?”

 

“I fucked up.”

 

He nods slowly in the way one does when they want to seem as though they’re following along when they actually have no idea what’s going on. “Yeah, you’ve said that. I’m still not exactly seeing how that may be.”

 

Beca huffs a sigh, frustrated that she can’t seem to formulate a proper explanation. She tilts her head back again and scrubs her palms over her thighs, trying to piece together the right words to make him understand all she’s done wrong. After a moment, she begins again. “Before... before she died, Mom told me to find people that I could share my life with, so I wouldn’t be alone, or whatever.” Beca falters for a second, thinking on that moment, but she barrels on. “But growing up, you guys always told me that I had to be careful never to hurt anybody. And I tried to do both of those things but I only screwed it up. I let people get close to me and they just got hurt.”

 

She chances a glance at him to gauge his response and sees a look of understanding emerge. He knows she’s right, then. He can see how everything that’s happened is a result of Beca being who and what she is, of Beca making the wrong choices. Of course her mother wouldn’t be happy to learn of Beca’s failures.

 

Her dad sighs. “Beca, honey.” When he reaches across the space between them to rest a hand on hers where it sits on her knee, Beca doesn’t pull away. “That is not true. Your mom would be  _so_  proud of you. I’m certain of that.”

 

“How?” She wants to believe his assurance but she can’t help the skepticism in her tone.

 

“Because we talked about it and we both agreed that we made the wrong choice in keeping you so isolated growing up.”

 

“You talked to mom?” she cuts in. “When?”

 

Her dad slides his hand back to clasp it with the other in his lap. “A couple of months before she passed away. I went to the hospital.”

 

“She never told me,” Beca murmurs, staring down at her own hands.

 

“We mostly talked about you,” he says, and when Beca glances up again his eyes look soft and sad. “Beca, we never meant to make you feel like you had to be shut off from the world for the rest of your life. True, we were trying to keep you safe, but we went about it the wrong way.”

 

Beca doesn’t respond, so he continues.

 

“ _That’s_  why she would be proud of you. For putting yourself out there. She wanted that for you.”

 

“I know,” Beca says, solemn. “But the fight-”

 

“Beca,” he interrupts, “you really think your mom would be disappointed in you for helping people?”

 

“I almost revealed myself to everyone. I almost- I got hurt. Other people did, too,” she protests.

 

“I know, and I’m not saying that none of that matters, Bec. But things could have been much worse,” he counters. “I’d say everything turned out okay. No serious damage was done.” He shrugs, clasped hands bobbing between his knees. “Can’t ask for much more than that.”

 

Beca deflates, mulling over his words.

 

She isn’t sure what to do now. Going in, she had expected him to agree with her assessment of the situation. But that’s been turned on its head, and she realizes that things are a lot less black and white than she had wanted to believe. Now that someone else is challenging her presumptions, it’s easier to see that she’s only been zeroing in on everything that has and might still go wrong. And that may be practical in the short term but it’s probably a rather shitty way to make all of her decisions in life.

 

She can’t deny that having friends had been really, unexpectedly nice. And that cutting them out of her life so abruptly has felt a lot less nice. But Beca can’t help wondering where the line is drawn – at what point is it just selfish of her to keep these people close? Her father seems to think it isn’t, though he hasn’t been the best parent in recent years so it’s hard to accept his assurances, especially those on behalf of her mother. Beca knows what her mother said about opening up, but she never said anything about how she should handle deadly threats and the risks they pose.

 

So, really, what do either of them know?

 

She understands that she ultimately has to make this decision for herself. Still, it would be nice if there were some kind of guide on human-alien relations because Beca’s feeling a little out of her depth here.

 

Her dad speaks up again before she can come to any kind of decision.

 

“All I’m saying is, if you’re thinking about pushing your friends away because of what happened, or because you’re scared… maybe you should think twice,” he advises, cautious. “If you trust them with your secret, then that’s special. You should hold on to them with all you have, or else you’ll probably regret it later.”

 

His tone hints heavily towards the fact that he’s speaking from experience to some degree. Beca wonders if he’s thinking of his hasty decision to leave her four years ago. It isn’t the same situation, really, but she has become more and more certain lately that her father has sincere regrets about his actions. That damage won’t been healed in a day, but she supposes it helps to know he isn’t a complete asshole.

 

Her dad shifts to the edge of the bed and leans forward to wrap an arm around her, an awkward gesture Beca resists for a moment before allowing him to pull her stiff frame into his side.

 

“You’ll figure it out, Bec,” he says.

 

Beca gives a noncommittal hum, but doesn’t challenge the idea any further.

 

“So,” he segues. It’s said in that tone parents use that implies they’re about to say or ask something embarrassing. “Do you maybe...” Oh, god. “... _like_ -like this Jesse boy?”

 

Beca barks a laugh and then shakes her head, nose scrunched and mouth curled in distaste as she vehemently denies the idea. Which, okay, maybe Jesse doesn’t deserve such a vigorously negative response but the thought is laughable to her. “No. And I’m not five, dad,” she adds, because ‘like-like,’ seriously?

 

Her dad looks at her for a long, uncomfortable second and Beca fidgets under his gaze until he nods with a knowing half smile and gets up to leave. “I’ll keep a plate warm for you.”

 

Beca blinks, confused, and watches him walk away. She feels like she’s just been duped somehow, like her dad knows it isn’t Jesse she cares for in _that_ way and he’d only been teasing her to confirm it. She doesn’t know  _how_ , though.

 

Except, thinking back on all of her recent conversations with him, Beca realizes she actually talks about Chloe, like, a  _lot_. Crap. No wonder he gave her that look, Beca thinks. She slaps a hand to her forehead with a groan.

 

Even though she is beyond embarrassed, Beca gathers herself and reluctantly goes downstairs for dinner, because she can smell it from her room and though she still isn’t Sheila’s biggest fan, she has to admit that the woman can cook. And if she avoids eye contact with her father the whole time, well, it’s not exactly anything new.

 

* * *

 

Once her embarrassment has mostly subsided later that evening, Beca thinks on the rest of her conversation with her dad and what he said about not pushing people away out of fear. As much as she hates to admit it, she knows he’s right about that last part. But she doubts he could ever truly understand the dilemma from her perspective.  _He_  isn’t responsible for people getting attacked and nearly killed simply because they happened to be near him.

 

Still, she can’t exactly move to Antarctica and live in solitude for the rest of her life. She has dreams, and they don’t involve icy caves and eating fish for every meal. Or whatever happens down there. And while she doesn’t want anyone to get hurt again because of her, she  _did_  go almost seventeen years before attracting any alien hell beasts, so in actuality it probably wouldn’t be too frequent of an occurrence and okay, maybe she had been a bit hasty in her decision to push everyone away.

 

Her mom is proof enough that shitty things happen beyond anyone’s control. She doubts that the alien attack on her school was anywhere close to a coincidence, but her dad had also been right about everything turning out as well as could be expected.

 

It’s probably what both of her parents had been trying to tell her, however it’s a lot more satisfying to come to the realization on her own – that, perhaps, some risks are worth taking.

 

Being afraid while kissing Chloe and hanging out with her friends sounds a hell of a lot better than being afraid and being alone.

 

Beca hits the wake button on her phone and stares at the new text message from Chloe, the one she’s been ignoring since school let out several hours ago. It’s only a reminder that they should talk, though she knows this is Chloe’s way of asking Beca to open up about her veritable disappearance before they take things any further. And it’s understandable. Were she in Chloe’s position, Beca might not even give herself the chance to explain the apparent abandonment of their friendship. Chloe is Chloe, though, and Beca could fuck up – within reason – a hundred times over and Chloe would still manage to forgive her.

 

Again, Beca is stricken with the feeling that someone as wonderful as Chloe Beale doesn’t deserve to have someone like Beca Mitchell inflicted upon her.

 

Chloe obviously doesn’t feel that way, however. A second message pops up as Beca’s staring at the screen.

 

_Beca? U still wanna talk?_

 

Chloe’s nice way of asking if Beca’s still too chickenshit to commit to one decision or the other. Ditch her friends for their own good or keep them close and accept the risks? The indecision continues to press at her.

 

Beca doesn’t know if she’ll be able to protect everyone next time. She doesn’t even know if it counts this time, considering she’d been the one to attract those things to the school in the first place. But she does know that there is a stark contrast between the way she has been feeling recently and the way she had gotten used to feeling before the attack, and it isn’t in favor of the former. Pushing people away was a skill of hers that morphed into an inherent character flaw, so suppressing those instincts now is more difficult than she imagined, but she can’t deny that she would be happier if she didn’t isolate herself from her friends. And some part of her that yearns for a connection, that wants to honor her mother’s dying wish, is pushing her to take the risk.

 

Beca runs a finger over the darkened screen of her phone and then hits the button again to light it up. Chloe’s messages are still there, staring back at her, until she taps in her passcode and it opens to the home screen, and then it’s the little ‘2’ bubble on the message app taunting her.

 

Those taunting notification bubbles plagued her often during the last month, all weighty reminders of the choice she thought she’d made to let her friends go. Eventually she had just cleared them all to evade the guilt and other unpleasant feelings that choice invoked.

 

Now, though, Beca won’t ignore the attempts to reach out to her. She’s ready to dive head first into this, come what may. Hell, if she can take on two alien monsters ten times her size, she can probably figure out how to let people into her life without messing it all up, right?

 

She isn’t entirely confident about that, but everything her parents have said to her continues to ring in her ears, and the overwhelming sense of loneliness looms over her, and she knows her decision is made.

 

Beca picks up her phone and begins to tap out a reply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there's that. In addition to the epilogue(s), I'm also considering doing future one-shots set in this universe after I finish up this fic. Clearly they wouldn't be coming at a rapid rate, but they might still be fun for me to write and you to read. Let me know what you think? Thanks!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys are awesome. Thank you so much for the kind reviews on the last chapter. Hope you enjoy this one, as well. Just one more to go now!

Beca doesn’t regret her decision.

 

She had thought she might, honestly. She’d thought that maybe after giving it some time, she would come to her senses again and realize she’d made a stupid mistake. But that isn’t the case. Granted, it has only been two weeks. It would be rather cruel of the universe to throw another alien attack-level incident her way in such a short span of time.

 

Still, it’s hard to feel anything but bliss when she’s spending the majority of her time with Chloe. Kissing Chloe, touching Chloe, even just talking to Chloe about the inanity of schoolwork gives Beca a sense of weightlessness that she hasn’t felt even while literally flying.

 

And maybe it’s simply the fact that she had gone so long without forming connections like this that is bringing about these refreshing feelings of contentment and belonging, but Beca likes to think that few other people could have gotten her to open up the way she has. She’s not sure many others would have stuck it out long enough to pull her from the thick steel walls of her shell. It’s not just Chloe, either, but Jesse and even Benji and the Bellas to varying degrees. All of them have affected Beca in ways she never would have imagined that first day in Barden after her mother’s funeral. She isn’t the same person she’d been all those months ago, and she can’t even pinpoint when exactly things started to change, but she isn’t terribly concerned about that. Beca knows she’s still the same person at her core – still stubborn, still passionate about music, still wondering where she came from – but just a lighter version of that person. Happier.

 

God, it sounds like such sappy nonsense, and it makes her cringe internally just to think such thoughts. But Beca can’t deny the change. She supposes she’d never fully comprehended how lonely she’d been, how painfully isolated, until her world was turned upside down.

 

That she’s even okay with this change still astounds Beca.

 

On the Wednesday of their third week back at school, she drags herself through her morning classes until the lunch bell finally rings and she can hurry to the cafeteria. Turns out, beating the lunch rush is way better than trying to avoid it. She gets her tray and commandeers a table before most of the other students begin pouring in and only waits a few minutes before Jesse is settling into the seat across from her.

 

“Hey, weirdo,” he greets with his usual cheer. Beca flicks a cherry tomato his way, but he’s getting too skilled at avoiding her makeshift projectiles.

 

“Hey,” she returns.

 

She’s been alternating between sitting with Jesse and Benji and sitting with the Bellas at lunch, and it sort of makes her feel as though she’s in the custody arrangement her parents might have worked out under a different set of circumstances. It’s not that they wouldn’t get along if they  _did_  all sit together, but both sides are still adamant about maintaining the pretenses of their a cappella rivalry leading up to the finals. Beca makes a point to scoff at the notion every time someone brings it up, but still humors them, nonetheless.

 

They eat in silence for a moment, waiting for Benji to join them - though much like Chloe, Jesse can’t go long before breaking it.

 

“So?”

 

Beca raises a single brow. “What?”

 

“So, how’s it going with Chloe?”

 

“You ask me that every time we talk,” she responds with a roll of her eyes. She isn’t exaggerating, either. It’s the first thing he’s asked her in their Psych class each morning for the last two weeks. The only thing that saved her this morning had been a pop quiz.

 

“Yeah, and you never give me a real answer,” he counters. “I’m just curious, Beca. Considering we haven’t really talked in a few days.”

 

Beca frowns, guilty, because he’s right.

 

The day after she’d given in and texted Chloe back, Beca had tracked Jesse down before school and apologized to him, as well. He’d been reluctant to accept it at first, and understandably so, seeing as she had shut him out for over a month with no explanation. But Jesse is forgiving, perhaps to a fault, and by the time they saw each other again in their shared class, he had been more than willing to drop right back into the familiar rhythm of their friendship. Honestly, Beca doesn’t know how she’s managed to get  _one_  kind and genuine person to like her, let alone multiple.

 

But with that comes the new challenge of learning how to balance her time and attention. Beca would gladly spend her every moment with Chloe Beale, but she also doesn’t want to neglect her other friendships. Which is a weird thing, considering she had never cared about avoiding people before – only now it’s actually a problem for her, as Jesse has just made evident.

 

“Sorry,” she says, grimacing. She twirls her fork through the casserole on her dish and keeps her eyes downcast. “It’s good. Really good. I like her.” It’s still barely more forthcoming than she had been the last few times he’d asked, but he doesn’t protest this time, probably because of the embarrassing smile threatening to crack her face. “And I didn’t mean to ignore you again. It’s still just so new, you know?”

 

Jesse sighs lightly and nods. “It’s fine, Beca,” he insists, and she can tell he means it. Her relief is short-lived, though, because then he’s grinning at her with a mischievous glint in his eye. “You can just sit through a whole movie sometime soon to make it up to me.”

 

Beca huffs, eyes rolling again. “Didn’t I already do that? With that shark movie?”

 

“You mean  _Jaws_? And no, that doesn’t count. You barely watched ten minutes of that.” He points his fork at her accusingly. “I bet you couldn’t even tell me the plot.”

 

Beca narrows her eyes at him. “Big shark attacks small boat. People get eaten, shark gets killed, everybody’s safe.”

 

“Okay, fine, so you Googled it.”

 

“No. It’s just like I told you, movies are boring and predictable.”

 

Jesse rolls his eyes in return and Beca briefly wonders if she’s rubbing off on him. “Fine, but you’re still watching  _The Breakfast Club_  with me.”

 

Beca grudgingly agrees to watch it with him that weekend and they’re joined by Benji soon after, finishing off their lunch with idle chatter.

 

* * *

 

Chloe finds her and pulls her aside at the end of lunch to insist that Beca come to her house after school for some undisclosed ‘surprise.’ Beca’s wary about the secrecy but still agrees with embarrassing swiftness. They make plans to meet by Chloe’s car when school ends and then Fat Amy appears from seemingly nowhere to drag Beca off to their next class, mumbling something about needing to copy down the homework before it starts.

 

When the final bell rings, Beca pushes her way out through the crowds instead of stalling until they thin out and finds Chloe already waiting for her as she approaches the car. Chloe brightens the instant she sees her. Beca still can’t get over the fact that someone who knows her can still react to her presence that way, but she returns the smile with one of her own.

 

“Hi! Ready to go?” Chloe asks. Beca nods and then chuckles when Chloe opens the passenger door for her to slide in.

 

It’s a short trip from the school to Chloe’s house, which isn’t far from the park Beca had frequented during her first months in Barden. She still visits on occasion, but now the desire to escape isn’t quite as strong as it had once been. As Chloe talks about the difficulties of the Bellas’ morning practice, Beca gazes out the window at the familiar line of trees when they pass by. Nostalgia hits her, and then an idea.

 

“I want to show you something, too,” Beca cuts in when Chloe finally pauses to take a breath.

 

Chloe tosses her a quick, curious glance before returning her eyes to the road. “Yeah?”

 

“Yeah.” As they turn the corner out of view of the park, Beca twists to gaze at Chloe, fingers tangling in her lap. “After your thing, though.”

 

The grin Chloe adopts just as they pull into her driveway sets Beca’s nerves going again, but before Beca can beg Chloe to just tell her what the surprise is, Chloe’s jumping out of the car and hurrying around the front so she can open Beca’s door again.

 

“You don’t have to do that,” Beca tells her.

 

Chloe merely gives her a dismissive shrug and shuts the door after Beca gets out, then grabs Beca by the hand and pulls her across the driveway and up the path towards the front door.

 

“Are your parents home?” She tries not to sound nervous at the prospect but doubts she pulls it off. Though they’ve been officially dating for about two weeks now, Beca has yet to meet Chloe’s parents. Chloe insists they’ll love her – and so, she claims, would her brothers when they come home from college to visit – but Beca has her doubts, and she’s not sure now is the right time for it, anyway. She would definitely like to get better at the whole social interaction thing before that becomes a reality. Although, at least if they end up hating her, she can take comfort in knowing she’s indestructible. More or less.

 

Chloe’s answer waylays her fears, however. “Nope, they’re still at work,” she says, still tugging on Beca’s hand. “Come on.” So Beca dutifully follows her into the house and hopes this ‘surprise’ isn’t something worse than having a meet-the-parents sprung on her.

 

They shrug off their backpacks in the entryway before Chloe leads her into the kitchen, and then suddenly Chloe is bringing them to an abrupt stop and Beca finds herself staring down at a colorfully decorated birthday cake. With  _her_  name spelled out in loopy script with bright blue frosting.

 

“Chloe, what-”

 

“Before you say anything, I  _know_  today isn’t your birthday,” Chloe interrupts. “But I found out from Lilly a couple days ago that your birthday was in September and I had to do something for you, even if it is really late. I just love birthdays, and I assumed, what with everything that was going on at the time, that maybe you didn’t get to have much in the way of a celebration on your actual birthday. So I wanted to do this for you,” she explains. “Plus, I know you love to eat, so I figured that even if you hate this we can still scrape off the ‘Happy Birthday’ and eat the cake like it didn’t happen.”

 

“Chloe...” Beca can tell Chloe is nervous about how she’ll take the gesture, even if she’s trying not to show it. Chloe needn’t worry, though, because Beca’s pretty sure she’s never felt more touched by someone’s actions in her life. And she’s not wrong, either. Beca’s mom had passed just two weeks after her sixteenth birthday, most of which Beca had spent in the hospital, and while her mom had bribed one of the nurses into getting a cake for Beca, it had by no means been a lighthearted celebration. Not that any of her previous birthdays had been big for her, either, considering her lack of friends growing up. So the fact that Chloe has even bothered means more than Beca can put into words. “Chlo, this is... This is really nice,” she says finally, and with as much sincerity she can muster without getting  _too_  sappy (aliens don’t cry, damn it). “Thank you.”

 

Chloe breaks into a grin tinged with obvious relief and flings her arms around Beca in one of her attack hugs that Beca’s slowly getting used to, if not returning once in a while. Which she does this time, hands coming up to rest against Chloe’s shoulder blades. And if she sighs quietly into Chloe’s hair, well, no one has any proof of that.

 

“I’m glad you like it,” Chloe says when they pull back, still grinning so widely it makes  _Beca’s_  face hurt.

 

“It’s awesome,” Beca replies. She swipes a finger through some of the frosting piped around the bottom edge of the cake and sticks it into her mouth, despite Chloe’s protesting slap against her arm. Beca’s about to do it again when a thought occurs to her. “Wait, how does  _Lilly_  know my birthday?”

 

Chloe’s eyes twinkle with mirth as she shuffles over to a drawer to pull out a knife. “She assists the staff in the front office once in a while. I asked her to look at your file for me.”

 

“They  _let_  her do that?” Beca wonders, genuinely surprised. She takes another swipe of frosting while Chloe’s back is turned. “Do you  _hear_  the things she whispers sometimes?”

 

Chloe shrugs, grabbing two plates and then moving back over to cut them each a slice. “I’m pretty sure she doesn’t give them a choice.”

 

“That makes sense.”

 

They sit down to eat their cake, which Chloe had apparently made herself – as if Beca had needed another reason to find her amazing. And now that Chloe knows her secret, Beca has no qualms about eating too much in front of her. Well, fewer qualms. She’s still worried Chloe will think she’s a freak, but Chloe actually seems flattered by how much of the cake Beca’s inhaling.

 

“So, when’s your birthday?” Beca asks as she’s scraping up the last bite of what she has decided is her final slice – for now.

 

“June seventh!” Chloe declares brightly, then reaches out with a finger to swipe some frosting off the corner of Beca’s mouth. And then brings her hand back to her own mouth to lick it off. It’s one of those moments Beca is sure Jesse’s dumb rom-coms are chock full of, but she’s still totally, stupidly mesmerized by it.

 

When Beca finally regains her higher brain functions, she clears her throat and looks down at her plate to obscure her blush. “Um. That’s-” She gulps, and manages to look back up. “That’s pretty soon.” The words don’t come out as light as she’d like, but she’s fairly sure Chloe knows exactly what that just did to Beca.

 

“Yep!” It’s said with a shit-eating grin that resolutely confirms Beca’s last thought. “You going to do something special for me, Becs?”

 

Beca presses her lips together and nods before she can say something stupid, then quickly pushes away from the table. “I’ll clean up,” she insists, and before Chloe can protest, she snags their plates and forks off the table and hurries into the kitchen to deposit them in the dishwasher.

 

She hears Chloe follow her in a moment later, but it’s still somewhat of a surprise when she wraps herself around Beca from behind and murmurs in her ear.

 

“Nervous about something?”

 

“No,” Beca responds, too quickly.

 

Chloe’s subsequent breathy laugh  _almost_  makes her shiver, but she blessedly manages to contain herself and not fuel Chloe’s teasing any further. Not that it makes any difference, considering Chloe’s still clinging onto her like a koala.

 

“Okay,” Chloe says, still in Beca’s ear, tone full of disbelief. She’s dipping her head, kiss halfway pressed to Beca’s jaw, when they’re both startled by loud crack.

 

Chloe stumbles back and Beca follows, staring at the spot where her hand had been gripping the granite countertop at the edge of the sink basin. There’s a long fissure there now – no drastic damage, but it’s certainly noticeable.

 

“Shit.”

 

Beca really needs to stop destroying people’s stuff. At least Jesse’s sofa cushion had been easier to hide than  _this_. She turns to Chloe, who’s staring at the counter with wide eyes. “Shit, Chloe, I’m sorry.”

 

“It’s fine,” Chloe tells her, voice a little too high to be entirely convincing. “I’ll just tell my parents I dropped a... a bowling ball on it. Or something.”

 

“A bowling ball?”

 

Chloe shrugs, tearing her eyes away from the cracked granite. “I’ll think of something.”

 

Before Beca can devolve into an actual panic, Chloe steps forward and brings her hands up to cradle Beca’s face, much like she had behind the school on their first day back. “It’s fine,” she whispers, and then she’s surging in and pressing her lips to Beca’s with enough force that Beca would have fallen backward if she were human.

 

And yeah, Beca could totally get used to this kind of reassurance.

 

* * *

 

Once they’ve stopped making out against Chloe’s broken kitchen counter, Chloe finally remembers that Beca had wanted to show her something, and no matter how much Beca wants to continue doing other things, Chloe is adamant about seeing whatever it is Beca wanted her to see. Although, it does take Beca a moment to remember what that had been now that Chloe has just kissed her senseless.

 

“Um, yeah,” Beca says when Chloe starts batting her eyelashes at her. She tugs her fingers through her hair and then gestures towards the front door. “Take a walk with me?”

 

Chloe readily agrees, so Beca drags her back out of the house and down the sidewalk in the direction of the park.

 

“Where are we going?” Chloe asks, reaching out to tangle her fingers with Beca’s.

 

“The park,” Beca tells her, because it’s not really a secret and they’ll be there in a few minutes anyway. Except Chloe pouts at her like she’s offended that Beca had answered her question. “What?”

 

“You’re not supposed to  _tell_  me!”

 

Beca frowns. “You  _asked_.”

 

“Yeah, but you’re just supposed to tell me it’s a surprise,” Chloe explains. Her subsequent groan is full of playful exasperation that has Beca rolling her eyes and fighting a grin.

 

“Well, that’s not really the surprise, anyway. Not exactly,” she adds. “And it isn’t even, like, a good surprise, or anything.”

 

“Still,” Chloe says, pout holding strong. Beca has to avert her eyes. After a minute, she feels Chloe squeeze her hand. “I’m sure the surprise will be great no matter what.”

 

Beca blushes at the sincere encouragement, but doesn’t say anything more, and they walk in comfortable silence for the rest of the trip. When she starts leading Chloe towards the trees instead of the benches or the playground, Chloe speaks up again.

 

“Leading me into the dark woods? Not exactly romantic, Bec,” she jokes.

 

Beca winces, realizing she should probably explain what’s going on now. “Uh, yeah. Sorry. I just... I came here a lot, early on. It was kind of my special place where I could escape and not worry about anything for a little while, y’know?” She pauses briefly as they pass the fallen tree she’d punched out of frustration all those months ago, remembering the turmoil that afflicted her more often than not. “I guess I just wanted to share this place with you, to show you a part of myself the way you’re always sharing things with me. Sorry if it’s stupid. I told you it was a bad surprise.”

 

Chloe’s smile softens and she gives Beca’s hand another squeeze when Beca’s eyes finally dare to meet hers. “It’s not stupid, Beca,” she says, gentle but resolute. “I love that you trust me enough to show me this.”

 

Beca shrugs, reaching up to tug at the ends of her hair with her free hand. But she can feel herself smiling, just a little, glad that Chloe seems to understand the significance of this place and of Beca disclosing that. It might seem like a frivolous detail to some, but Beca can’t imagine the state she’d be in if she hadn’t had the park and her music to escape into.

 

They’ve stopped walking now, standing face to face on the path Beca had long since worn into the brush. When she glances over Chloe’s shoulder she spots the downed tree again, and decides that this place isn’t the only thing she wants to show Chloe today.

 

She glances down at her hand clasped with Chloe’s as the question comes tumbling from her lips. “Can I show you something else?”

 

And of course, Chloe doesn’t hesitate to encourage Beca to continue. Which is how Beca ends up putting on a little show for her girlfriend, demonstrating more of her powers for the first time since Chloe confessed to knowing she had them. She’s nervous at first, but Chloe only seems delighted by it all, much like Jesse had been - though with the added bonus of a kiss at the end to express her appreciation of Beca’s abilities. She seems particularly enthused by the idea of x-ray vision, and Beca can only blush at her waggling eyebrows.

 

After they have their fun Beca tells Chloe the specifics about what she is and where she came from, or at least the little she knows of the matter. Chloe seems distraught at the idea that Beca had never gotten to know the world she’d come from, but Beca tries to stem the brimming tears by mentioning her spaceship.

 

“It’s still at your old house?” Chloe questions, curiosity superseding sorrow once more.

 

Beca breathes a quiet sigh of relief. She may be getting better at social interactions, but emotions still present a vast realm of uncertainty she can probably never hope to navigate the way someone like Chloe does. “Yeah,” she confirms, “it’s buried under an old cellar that collapsed in a storm a few years back. Jesse thinks I should dig it up, but... I don’t know. I never learned much from it before, so why would I now?” She shrugs and leans back into the tree they’d chosen to sit under while they talk.

 

“Jesse knows?” Chloe asks, and Beca remembers then that she hadn’t actually told either of them that the other knows her secret.

 

“Oh, uh, yeah.” She flicks at the dirt near her left thigh and then looks back to Chloe. “He kind of found out by accident, too.”

 

Chloe nods, thoughtful, and after a moment smiles widely at her. “If you  _do_  go dig it up, can I come?”

 

Beca raises an eyebrow. “You’d want to?”

 

“Of course!” Chloe lightly jostles their hands, now clasped again and resting in her lap. “If you want to learn more about yourself, then I want to be there to support you.”

 

“Okay,” Beca agrees. There’s no need to think about it. She’ll keep Chloe close for as long as Chloe will let her.

 

Beca walks Chloe back to her house not long after. This time, they make out on Chloe’s bed rather than the kitchen counter, and Beca gets lost in it for an indeterminate length of time, up until Chloe announces that her parents will be home within the hour. She stays long enough to have another slice of cake and then heads home with the rest packed into a container for her by Chloe. They kiss in the open doorway for longer than is probably acceptable.

 

“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive you?” Chloe asks when they finally part.

 

Beca shakes her head. “I’ll be fine. It’s almost dark, so I can probably get away with running if I’m careful.”

 

Chloe frowns and pokes at Beca’s left shoulder. “Don’t take risks.”

 

Beca sighs with good-natured exasperation, but nods her acquiescence a moment later. “I know. I won’t.” It’s nothing she hasn’t heard from her parents a million times over the years, though for some reason it seems less annoying coming from Chloe. That’s likely just the kissing clouding her brain, but she decides not to dwell on that for now.

 

“Good,” Chloe says. She gives Beca one last, quick peck on the lips and then Beca’s turning and heading across the driveway and down the street towards home.

 

Home. She thinks about that as she walks. When did she start thinking of her dad and Sheila’s house as ‘home’? It certainly hadn’t felt that way at first. Home was the place she grew up in, with her mom and her music, and no one and nothing else. It would never be the unfamiliar house in Barden with the father who left her and the woman she’d never met. She would never find  _home_  here. She’d been sure of that.

 

Yet, things feel different now. Not perfect, and not like before, but better she had ever believed they could feel. Maybe she’ll never feel one hundred percent comfortable with her dad and Sheila, but it isn’t the hell it could have been. And though she still can’t stand to be there sometimes, it helps that she still has her music - and now friends that can make the rest of Barden feel like a home to her, too. It isn’t the life she imagined she’d have when she was young, but given circumstances, Beca thinks she’s faring pretty well.

 

* * *

 

Her dad is there when she gets back, sitting at the kitchen table and grading a stack of essays with a red pen. It reminds Beca of the time she was four and stole a similar red pen, which she’d broken almost immediately. Her parents had to replace the ink stained carpet in the living room and throw away the clothes she’d been wearing, probably wishing she’d just drawn on the walls like a normal kid. However, many incidents thereafter only further cemented that she would never quite be a ‘normal’ kid.

 

“Hey, Bec.” Her dad’s voice pulls her from the reverie, and Beca gives him a nod as she makes her way into the kitchen and sets her cake on the counter.

 

Her dad raises a questioning eyebrow at the container. “Is that cake?”

 

“Um, yeah,” Beca says, fingers tapping against the lid. “Chloe made me a birthday cake.”

 

His other eyebrow lifts to join the first. “Your birthday was nearly seven months ago.”

 

Beca just shrugs and goes to grab a drink from the fridge. “Late birthday present.”

 

He seems to accept that, because he doesn’t say anything further on the matter. Instead, he asks, “So how is Chloe?”

 

Beca freezes halfway through a sip of orange juice, then proceeds to chug down the rest of her glass as an excuse not to answer right away. She hasn’t actually told her dad yet that she and Chloe are dating. Or rather, she hasn’t confirmed it for him. She’s fairly certain he’s already figured it out himself.

 

Beca doesn't remember her dad being that perceptive in the past, but perhaps she’s just being embarrassingly obvious about it. After all, he and Sheila did at one point express surprise any time she so much as left her bedroom.

 

“She’s fine...” Beca answers warily when there’s no more juice left to save her. She eyes the cake.

 

“Just ‘fine’?”

 

“I guess,” she replies, snatching up a fork and the cake and beginning to back out of the room. “Well, I have homework, so...” She isn’t going to  _do_  it – in fact, she’d left her backpack by the front door, so she really  _can’t_  do her homework without backtracking to retrieve it – but she’ll say anything to escape the impending awkward conversation.

 

Her dad nods, blessedly understanding her less than subtle hint to drop the subject, or maybe realizing he’s not exactly eager to delve into the details of his daughter’s love life, either. “Okay, honey. See you for dinner?”

 

“Sure,” Beca says, and then she’s making her escape – with just a touch of inhuman speed.

 

* * *

 

Instead of homework, she alternates between working on a mix and texting Chloe. Although, she’d made the mistake early on in their conversation of telling Chloe what she’s doing, so now that conversation consists mostly of Chloe begging Beca send some of her mixes, along with a hundred ‘please’s and that emoji with the squinting eyes and wide grin that is basically the emoji-representation of Chloe. One of them, anyway (not that Beca has put thought into this or anything).

 

Over the course of an hour, Beca’s resolve gets gradually whittled down until it’s basically nonexistent, which kind of happens without her conscious acknowledgment and therefore comes as a bit of a shock. The thing is, Beca has never shared her work with anybody before, but Chloe makes her feel safe enough to share anything with her without a lot of agonizing indecision – in fact, Beca has already shared most of the important things with her – so she finds herself tapping out her agreement almost before she realizes she's doing it.

 

Chloe’s near-instantaneous response is a ‘YAY’ with ten exclamation points and followed by a string of nonsensical emojis, including a jack-o-lantern and three hedgehogs.

 

Beca reluctantly drafts an email and attaches five of what she considers her best mixes and, after five long minutes of hesitation and deliberation (she’s not  _completely_  free of indecision, all right?), one original that she doesn’t mention is an original, then sends it to Chloe before she can chicken out.

 

Beca’s pretty sure she only waits the length of the first song before her phone is ringing, Chloe’s name flashing on the caller ID. She picks up to immediate, excited screaming in her ear and nearly flings the phone through the wall in her haste to get it away before it shatters her eardrum. “Whoa, Chlo, sensitive ears, remember?”

 

“ _Oops, sorry!_ ” Chloe proceeds to exclaim, more quietly, how much she loves the first mix (“ _Titanium is my jam! And it works so well with that other song – I never would have thought of that!_ ”) and then makes Beca stay on the line while she listens to the rest.

 

Beca tries really hard not to smile like an idiot the entire time.

 

When Chloe gets to the last song, Beca almost tells her not to listen to it. But she figures Chloe would ignore her and listen no matter (or maybe because of) how much Beca pleads, so Beca just sighs and resigns herself to whatever response she may receive.

 

The song ends two and a half minutes later, and Chloe’s quiet for a minute before she asks, “ _I’ve never heard that song before. Who’s it by?_ ”

 

“It’s no one,” Beca blurts. “Nobody. You don’t know them.”

 

Chloe doesn’t say anything for another moment, then, “ _Beca... Was that you singing? Did you write that song?_ ”

 

Beca fakes a cough, trying to stall so she can come up with a good alternative explanation, but neither a clever imagination nor excellent lying skills are among her list of superpowers. Eventually, her brain feeling like the biological equivalent of a barren desert full of tumbleweeds, she just stutters out a “Maybe?”

 

“ _Beca!_ ” She hears Chloe slapping something on her end and figures it would probably be Beca’s arm if she were there in person. “ _You told me you couldn’t sing!_ ” Chloe practically screeches again, and Beca has to yank her phone away from her ear for the second time.

 

“To be fair, I said I  _didn’t_  sing. Not that I couldn’t.”

 

“ _That’s still a lie, Beca!_ ” Chloe admonishes (yells), but she doesn’t actually sound angry, which relieves Beca. The thought of a truly angry Chloe Beale makes the invulnerable alien shake in her figurative boots.

 

When Beca doesn’t say anything else, Chloe hums quietly. “ _It’s really amazing, Beca,_ ” she says, almost reverent.

 

Beca laughs, breathless. “Um. Thanks,” she says, fingers tugging through her hair. “You seriously like it?”

 

“ _I love it._ ”

 

The lack of hesitation in Chloe’s response is even more relieving than the words themselves. Beca smiles into her phone as Chloe adds, “ _I love all of them._ ”

 

“Thanks, Chlo.”

 

Chloe suddenly whines and Beca furrows her brow, checking that her phone isn’t experiencing some kind of weird feedback. It’s not.

 

“Chloe?”

 

“ _I just wish you had showed me all of this stuff sooner! Now it’s too late for you to join the Bellas this year. If we add an extra member just for finals we could get disqualified._ ”

 

Beca barely resists responding with a sarcastic “Bummer.” Instead she remembers a thought she had during the semi-finals. “Yeah, about that. Your set at semi-finals sounded great and all, but have you ever thought about updating your song choices? Y’know, singing some songs from  _this_  century?”

 

Chloe hums in apparent agreement. “ _I suggested it once, but Aubrey’s pretty resistant to changing the status quo._ ”

 

“Aren’t you co-captain?”

 

“ _Yeah, but I don’t want to push her. Aubrey is..._ ”

 

“Wound tighter than a ball of twine?” Beca suggests.

 

“ _Oh, hush,_ ” Chloe chides. “ _But yes, she’s not good with drastic changes. It would have to be something really good to convince her to change her mind._ ”

 

Beca bites her lip, considering. “I think I might have some ideas.”

 

* * *

 

Using some remarkable powers of persuasion, mysteriously obtained score sheets from the semi-finals, and a few sample sets Beca had put together, Chloe somehow manages to convince Aubrey to consider changing up the Bellas’ set list. It probably helps that with two months remaining until the finals they can still manage to learn a new routine – and that Chloe doesn’t divulge Beca’s involvement until after Aubrey has officially agreed.

 

Beca starts helping the Bellas prepare for the a cappella finals four days a week, much to Jesse’s amusement. And slight jealousy. He’s never heard Beca’s music, but he’s somehow convinced it’s great and that the Bellas are much more of a threat now. Beca scoffs and rolls her eyes every chance she gets, but never outright denies that she might be having some fun with the whole thing.

 

She’s familiar with each of the Bellas, of course, and has heard them sing together and separately, but working with them like this has given her the opportunity to learn more about each girl’s individual skills and interests. Lilly’s beatboxing, Cynthia Rose’s range, Jessica and Ashley’s eerie synchronicity. Organized in just the right way, it all adds up to a harmonious sound that ignites in Beca the kind of feeling she’d thought could only be felt sitting behind her mixing board. But helping the Bellas almost feels like she  _is_  mixing, only instead of baselines and drum beats, she has the girls. It’s kind of exhilarating, in a weird way.

 

Weird with the Bellas is par for the course, though, and Beca has never felt so normal in her life than when she’s hanging out with these weirdos. When Amy’s telling her outrageous stories, or Stacie’s being uncomfortably lewd, or Aubrey is sharing an incomprehensible adage from her father. When Chloe laughs and Flo yells and Emily says something adorably naive. They may not be strange visitors from another planet, but despite their multitude of differences, they have a way of making her feel as though she fits in.

 

More than ever, Beca realizes why her mother had been so adamant that she let herself form connections like this. Spending time with Chloe and her friends, she can see it so clearly now – more so than all of the words from her parents could only tell her. Closing herself off may be safer, may be easier, but it can get suffocating after a while, staying there behind her walls.

 

Having people to share her life with now feels a lot like coming up for air.


	11. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m so sorry, I forgot I still had to finish this. Apologies if it seems a bit rushed, but I just wanted to get it posted and not leave you all hanging any longer. Thanks to everyone for reading and I hope you’ve enjoyed this fic!

Four months later...

 

Beca lands with more care than she’s accustomed to using, the wind blowing her hair back and giving her a clear line of sight to the dusty ground below. She sets her passengers down first, her own feet landing a second later, and glances around. The property is remote enough that she’s not worried about being seen out here, but she checks anyway, out of habit developed since moving into the city.

 

“That was amazing,” Jesse breathes, once Beca has loosened her death grip on his waist. “Flying without a plane is amazing.”

 

Beca rolls her eyes until they fall on a grinning Chloe. Her girlfriend’s smile is even wider than Jesse’s, and Beca forgets for a moment that she’s supposed to be exasperated by these idiots.

 

When she finally tears her gaze away, Beca turns to survey the house a few yards from where they’d landed.

 

Memories of her childhood hit her with more force than she’d anticipated. All of those years of fear and confusion as her powers began to emerge, of learning to adapt while terrifying her parents at every turn, and then watching it all fall apart in the end. These all interspersed with flashes of the good times they’d had, as well, of birthdays and holidays and races through the fields that her parents never stood a chance of winning. It fills her with a bittersweet ache that momentarily distracts her from the purpose of this visit.

 

Chloe’s fingers curling around her shoulder draw her out of it.

 

“Hey,” she murmurs, low enough that only Beca can hear. Not that Jesse is paying much attention, anyway. He’s still staring up at the sky like he’s searching for a way to fly up there on his own. “You okay?”

 

Beca blinks, sighs lightly, and flicks her gaze back to Chloe. “Yeah,” she answers. “Yeah, just... remembering some things.”

 

Chloe gives her a soft smile and squeezes the shoulder still beneath her gentle fingers. “Maybe you can tell me about them sometime.” She poses it as a suggestion, but one unburdened with the weight of expectation. Chloe doesn’t expect any more from Beca than what she is able to give. It’s what made telling Chloe everything she already  _has_  told her so much easier.

 

“Sure,” Beca murmurs back, and smiles.

 

At that moment, Jesse returns from his dreamland in the clouds and turns to face the both of them with his hands balanced on his waist. “So, are we going to do this, or what?” he asks with a half-grin edging up one side of his mouth.

 

“‘We?’” Beca returns skeptically. “I didn’t realize you’d brought a shovel along with you.”

 

Jesse pouts, but wisely chooses to keep his mouth shut for the time being.

 

With a good-natured roll of her eyes, Beca starts walking away and gestures for them to follow. “Come on, I’ll show you the house first.”

 

“You still have a key?” Chloe asks.

 

Beca shrugs, glancing at them over her shoulder. “One of the upstairs windows doesn’t lock properly.”

 

Fortunately, the property has yet to be sold. But beyond the fact that they’re technically trespassing and wouldn’t want to get caught, Beca is just glad to have one last chance to see this place untainted by someone else. Wandering around her old home, she realizes she kind of misses the benefits of rural life that had allowed her to use her powers more openly. Flying this far with Chloe and Jesse under her arms had been like stretching an underused limb. It’s probably the most irresponsible thing she’s ever done, but it was fun.

 

As they walk across the dead grass of the front yard and then through the house that had been her home for sixteen years, Beca’s thoughts turn to her last few months in Barden.

 

With the help of her carefully tailored set list, the Bellas had won the a cappella finals by a landslide, delivering the Treblemakers their first defeat in years. Still, for the most part Jesse hadn’t even been upset about the ‘betrayal,’ because she’d let him and Benji put her through a _Star Wars_ marathon as a consolation prize.

 

She hadn’t suffered without a suitable amount of grumbling, however. Beca may not remember anything about space or her planet, but she’s pretty sure those movies are wildly inaccurate. She’d made sure to tell Jesse as much after Benji had left on the first day of their marathon, and she wouldn’t let him argue the point. By nature of her DNA, she’s the de facto authority on all matters of extraterrestrial life. Jesse had grudgingly conceded.

 

The Bellas themselves had been grateful for the part she’d played in their win. Even Aubrey had managed to choke out a ‘thank you’ in Beca’s general direction. And despite the finals signaling the end of their practice sessions, Beca has found herself still spending time with the girls, the power – and occasional frustration – of those relationships becoming clearer to her every day.

 

Once they’ve finished up in the house, Beca leads them across the property to where the old shed leading down to the cellar had once stood. It has, to her relief, been left untouched by the realtors that had come and gone in the past year.

 

When she’d told her dad about her plans to dig up the ship, he had surprised her with his swift agreement. But they’d both decided that leaving an alien spaceship on the property for the future occupants to find wasn’t an option.

 

More than that, however, Beca’s doing this to learn more about herself and about the planet she’d left behind. Her parents had told her all they could about her origins when she was twelve. The ship holds the only answers to the many questions she still has.

 

The problem, Beca thinks as she stares at the mound of upturned earth and rotted wood, is how exactly to get it out.

 

Jesse’s still insistent that she spin into the ground like some kind of living drill, but Beca refuses to eat a pound of dirt or come out looking like she’s never bathed in her life.

 

“But it would be awesome,” Jesse whines.

 

“It really wouldn’t.” She hears Chloe giggle behind her and swings around with a half-hearted glare.

 

Chloe only shrugs, offering a teasing smile.

 

“Then how-” Before Jesse can finish the question, Beca has disappeared and reappeared with a shovel, which she briefly brandishes in his face. “Where-?”

 

She ignores him, winking at Chloe’s endeared grin, and starts digging as fast as she can, flinging the dirt away from them at near-imperceptible speed until there’s a massive pile of earth beside an equally massive hole. A check with her x-ray vision confirms that only a few more inches of dirt separate her from the pod, so she jumps in and kicks the dirt away with her boots until the silvery sheen of alien metal peeks through.

 

Beca’s knuckles sting with phantom pain at the sight of it, a reminder that the seemingly innocuous substance had been the only thing to ever cause her harm.

 

“Is that it?” she hears from above. Jesse's leaning over the edge of the hole, precariously close to falling in as he attempts to get a better look.

 

“Yeah.” Beca toes another clump of dirt off the ship’s hull, revealing a portion of a symbol she’d never been able to decipher.

 

“Can you get it out?” Chloe asks, red curls hanging down as she leans carefully into view. Beca nods and grabs the shovel.

 

After a little more digging, she manages to get the ship free from the hard-packed dirt and hauls it back up onto the dead grass next to Chloe and Jesse. Despite her earlier protests, she’s covered head to toe in dirt, anyway.

 

“See? You should have just done the spinning thing.”

 

Beca flicks dirt into his mouth before it can close, smirking as he splutters and wipes frantically at his tongue.

 

“Bec,” Chloe chides, but she’s laughing, too.

 

Once Jesse is done dramatically cleaning his mouth, Beca steps over to the ship. It’s as pristine as the day it had been buried, save for the traces of dirt lodged in its various grooves. Not a single part of it shows signs of being crushed under tons of packed earth for the past few years.

 

“It’s beautiful,” Chloe breathes, swiping a finger over one of the symbols etched along the side of the hull.

 

“It’s smaller than I pictured,” Jesse says, and begins to circle the ship, taking it all in.

 

“Dude, I was a baby. I didn’t need a lot of space.”

 

She watches them lean over it in turn to peer inside the glass-like portion of the shielding, but knows it will be too dark for them to see anything. Even her x-ray vision could never manage to penetrate the material.

 

“How do you open it?” Chloe asks.

 

Beca shrugs and gives the nose of the ship a light kick. “I don’t know. I could never figure it out.” She circles around to the right side, where a single, larger symbol stands out from all of the rest, just below the glass. “My parents said it opened right after it landed and sealed shut again as soon as they took me out.”

 

Jesse taps at a few of the smaller symbols on the other side. “Do you know what these mean? Maybe they’re instructions.”

 

Beca shakes her head, reaching out to brush dirt from the large symbol. “No. I-” As her palm presses against the center of the symbol, a low hum begins to emanate from within the ship. All of the symbols start to glow soon after, a silver-blue light that increases in intensity with the hum.

 

Beca steps back, pulling Chloe with her and gesturing for Jesse to do the same, because it wouldn’t totally surprise her if she’d just inadvertently set off some kind of self-destruct sequence.

 

But her concerns are alleviated only a moment later. With a click and hiss of air, the opaque glass shielding rises upward half an inch and slides backwards in a graceful arc, disappearing almost like magic into the upper hull. Another click signals it locking into place, and then the humming sound cuts out with an abrupt finality, though the symbols continue to glow.

 

“Okay, that was awesome,” Jesse declares in the ensuing silence.

 

They all step back toward the ship and lean over it to peer inside.

 

There isn’t much to it, really. A soft blue seat, a small compartment in the back, and some kind of navigation console in the front. Beca’s about to check inside the dark compartment when the console lights up, the same bluish glow as the hull symbols. From a small, round opening in the center, an even brighter light shines as a sleek and narrow crystal slides up into view. Sticking with the apparent theme, the crystal is also blue, the shade vaguely reminiscent of Chloe’s eyes, Beca thinks idly.

 

Chloe’s fingers press against Beca’s shoulder as she leans over to see everything better. “What’s that?” she asks, breath brushing over Beca’s ear.

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“It’s pretty. Maybe it’s a family heirloom or something.”

 

“Or a magic wand,” Jesse suggests. Beca can’t be sure if he’s joking or not.

 

Figuring that the people who sent her here probably didn’t also send something to harm her, Beca shrugs and reaches out to pull the crystal from its slot.

 

It has more weight to it than she expects, given its size. The outer surface is smooth as glass, and when she twists it back and forth in the light, it seems to give off a shimmering, rainbow-like effect, the way the underside of a CD would in the same situation. “Weird,” she murmurs.

 

Chloe smooths a finger over the crystal when Beca holds it out to her. A second later, she grins and gestures grandly back toward the ship. “Let’s see what else is inside.”

 

Later, after Beca has removed everything from the ship that might shed some light on her past – a blanket like the one she’d been wrapped in as a baby, some sort of medallion, a thin book filled with the same symbols as the ship’s hull – she steps back and surveys the ship and the property surrounding them.

 

“Where will you take it?” Chloe asks.

 

“Back to the city? I bet Sheila would love it,” Jesse jokes.

 

“Right,” Beca scoffs, then sighs. “No, I think I know what to do with it.”

 

She gives Chloe a kiss and Jesse an almost gentle punch to the shoulder, picks up the ship, and leaves them at the house, flying straight up past the clouds and south towards the ocean until she reaches the remote, icy wasteland of the arctic. She deposits the ship in a cavern where she’ll (probably) be able to find it again. There isn’t time to do anything more now – she has to return to her friends – but someday she plans to return, to study the ship better. She knows it holds more answers about her past than it appears to.

 

When Beca returns to the house, landing at a slight run in the tall brown grass, Chloe comes up to sweep her into a hug.

 

“All good?”

 

“Yeah,” she replies. “All good.”

 

After they pull back, Chloe reaches for her hand and Beca takes it readily. She waves Jesse over and he passes her the bag full of her stuff from the ship.

 

“Ready to go home?” Chloe asks.

 

“Yeah.” Beca gives her hand a gentle squeeze. “I’m ready.”


End file.
